<div dir="ltr">Understandable Ken. But to put patchwork down 2 just Nick Land throws away a whole bunch of rich theoretical writing other places................<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 3:59 AM warkk <<a href="mailto:warkk@newschool.edu">warkk@newschool.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr">Thanks for the links, Alice. I started reading but Nick Land came up so i stopped reading immediately. I never took him to be state-of-the-art theory. Others might find the space interesting but its just not for me. Reaons given here: <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3284-on-nick-land" target="_blank">https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3284-on-nick-land</a><div><br></div><div>Patrick is i think pointing us both back to the nineties but also forward, and i think that's a good note to hit before anyone starts getting into a nostalgic vein. I think its more about bracketing-off what networks came to be in the two consolidations of the power of what i call the vectoralist class. The first was around 2000, with the rise of corporate forms built on nothing but IP. The second came a decade later, with the commdification not just of information but also of the social network itself. </div><div><br></div><div>Patrick also asks why the mushroom as a figure. I don't really understand how this part works, but it is the bit i find intriguing: that mushrooms have 36,000 genders, or something like that. Maybe Shu Lea's introduction of the mycelium into discussion will encourage me to get a layhumans' grasp on how that works. It seems just at first sight to be be an interesting thought-image of how protocols might work otherwise. </div><div><br></div><div>mw</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 1:10 PM, patrick lichty <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:p@voyd.com" target="_blank">p@voyd.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>
As someone who would call himself postcybernetic rather than postinternet,<br>
I agree with Dollyoko nd Ken. The spaces for intereaction were highly<br>
heterogenous and diverse, and Honestly, I find the postinternet discourse<br>
relatively bland by comparison, as a lot of what it talks about is reference<br>
to postcybernetic/cyberdelic. MOOs, MUDs, Even back to nets of online<br>
communities (Thing, Compuserve, Delphi, Fidonet, Usenet) was amazing. In<br>
many ways it seems like the corporate stacks combined with academic FOMO has<br>
created a tremendous amount of conservatism compared to the crash theory<br>
days of the Krokers.<br>
<br>
In many ways, I think our era of risk aversion and its pruning of the<br>
rhizome is indicative of the relationship between culture and capital. As<br>
art fairs and consolidating gallery culture, as well as the struggle (in my<br>
mind) to figure ourselves out more as Postmodernism fractured into the<br>
Speculative Turn, the notion of the rhizome has turned into reality bubble<br>
foam that generally swirls under megacorporate umbrellas.<br>
<br>
This is why I love things like Dina Karadzic's FUBAR bunch, and Shu Lea's<br>
work the other year at the Leonore residency, but I also wonder why the<br>
notion of the mycorhizome is so strong these days as opposed to the<br>
strawberry patch (Deleuze), is it a subliminal signifier of fruit and decay<br>
and rebirth?<br>
<br>
Also very interested in t-shroom discussion.<br>
<br>
Love from the desert<br>
(also apologies for the typos - my current computer has a very flaky<br>
keyboard)<br>
<div><div class="m_4244943845845205271h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: <a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
<<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>> On Behalf Of warkk<br>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:13 PM<br>
To: soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br>
<br>
Alan is quite right to stress how extensive the options were for online<br>
encounters in the 90s, beyond the handful i named. The larger point might<br>
still be that knowledge of any of that world is fairly thin these days.<br>
There are a few period accounts. dollyoko mentions Marshall's Living on<br>
Cybermind. Julian Dibbell wrote a book about LambdaMoo. There's a new book<br>
by Claire Evans called Broad Band that has good brief accounnts of Echo and<br>
The Word and is focused on innovations in computation by women.<br>
<br>
Of course one could ask whether the linear prose form of the book is the<br>
best or even a necessary way of documenting such things. I think of the book<br>
as an instance of what dollyoko calls "successionist servers." Its hard to<br>
keep them out of Amazon, one of the biggest vectoral class enterprises of<br>
our time, but they will at least 'run' independently of that proprietary<br>
environment.<br>
<br>
A book is a concentrated swarm whereas online communication tend to default<br>
to dispersed ones....<br>
<br>
dollyoko has some great language for an ongoing project: secessionist<br>
servers, intentional family, open family platforms, vernacular approaches to<br>
infrastructure. (To just pick a few that i think go together with the themes<br>
Shu Lea suggested).<br>
<br>
Maybe its a good thing that 90s cyberculture experiments ended up largely<br>
invisible and excluded from history, as now it might be time to be rather<br>
discreet about the possibilities uncovered then. Maybe it was a good thing<br>
for mycelium that it was largely invisible for so long, as nobody figured<br>
out how to monetize it.<br>
<br>
mw<br>
<br>
On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 2:16 AM, <<a href="mailto:dollyoko@thing.net" target="_blank">dollyoko@thing.net</a>> wrote:<br>
<br>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
><br>
> dear shu lea and empyreans<br>
><br>
> yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters, deep code luscious <br>
> moon brown stem the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in <br>
> borrowed loft wiping sweat, not swiping left (write left alt write) <br>
> Floodnet!<br>
><br>
> i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today <br>
> feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds<br>
><br>
> 'powerful poetic gestures'<br>
> 'alternate sentiences'<br>
> 'the incomputable'<br>
> 'nature is not a system'<br>
> 'break all separations'<br>
> 'imps fuelling the real'<br>
> 'vernacular approach to infrastructure'<br>
> 't-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'<br>
> 'i have a vast genetic network in me'<br>
> 'we begin to think like a forest'<br>
><br>
> how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age) created <br>
> in the 90s [while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media list, or <br>
> skiving off to PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down] before <br>
> other 'we(s)' were born<br>
><br>
> Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one answer to <br>
> Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives<br>
><br>
> i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013, prompted <br>
> by projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie <br>
> Circuits - instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and (equally <br>
> wonderful) Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure what <br>
> the mycelial potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect <br>
> there's something though...... for example, a nascent project I'm <br>
> doing with Virginia Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it starting point:<br>
><br>
> -----------------------------------<br>
><br>
> "A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment <br>
> (multi-user domain object-oriented), performing avatars, improvised <br>
> performance, experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the <br>
> (ethereum) blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is the <br>
> construction of intentional family beyond blood and kind.<br>
><br>
> We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming <br>
> subjectivities to explore the production of xenofam and xenobodies, <br>
> outside of social re-production, and bring those practices to bear <br>
> upon the "real". Only a few years after the emergence of the WWW, <br>
> social networking habits were harnessed and stratified into machines <br>
> for the production of social capital and new affective forms of <br>
> extractivism within the paradigm of info-capitalism. Yet the outlier <br>
> LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small phreak family as a working <br>
> experiment, an enclave among other secessionist servers (caves, <br>
> sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out space to platform<br>
lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.<br>
><br>
> The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0 and <br>
> Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as <br>
> becoming-kin to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds through <br>
> which datablood flows. This queered approach to extensible and open <br>
> family platforms generates intentional spaces for the reconfiguration <br>
> of blood ties beyond blood types, and another mode of hexing Capital."<br>
><br>
> --------------------<br>
><br>
> I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait the 12 <br>
> hours for the wild yeasts to do their thing.<br>
> I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way <br>
> while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we have aerials'<br>
> might take a mycelial turn<br>
><br>
><br>
> Warmly, to all<br>
> doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to this <br>
> conversation, tomorrow<br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned<br>
> > space----------------------_________________________________<br>
> ______________<br>
> > empyre forum<br>
> > <a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" target="_blank">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br>
> > <a href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a><br>
><br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
> empyre forum<br>
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><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-- <br>
<br>
McKenzie Wark<br>
</div></div>*Professor of Media and Culture*<br>
<span>EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br>
65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br>
<br>
<a href="mailto:warkk@newschool.edu" target="_blank">warkk@newschool.edu</a><br>
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</span><div class="m_4244943845845205271HOEnZb"><div class="m_4244943845845205271h5">_______________________________________________<br>
empyre forum<br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="m_4244943845845205271gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><p style="font-family:arial;font-size:10px;color:#000;padding:5px 0 0 5px;margin:0px"><span style="color:#e82e21">McKenzie Wark</span><br>
<strong>Professor of Media and Culture</strong><br>
<span style="color:#e82e21">EUGENE LANG COLLEGE</span><br>
<span>65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011</span></p><p style="font-family:arial;font-size:10px;color:#666;padding:10px 0 0 5px;margin:0px">
<a href="http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#" style="color:#666" target="_blank">warkk@newschool.edu</a><br>
<span style="color:#000;font-weight:bold">T</span> 212 229 5100 2241 / <span style="color:#000;font-weight:bold">M</span> 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br></p><br></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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