Re: [-empyre-] Dr. Nechvatal

["Joseph Nechvatal" <joseph_nechvatal@hotmail.com>]

> From: "Daniel Young" <danielyoung@rcn.com>
>
> Dear Dr. Nechvatal,
>
> Thank you for the stimulating  and challenging introduction. I have read 
> the first two parts through (with the help of a dictionary). I ask you the 
> following questions to clarify my understanding.

Hi Daniel. Thanks. Good to meet you.

> 1. Is it accurate to say that "viractualism" is a reaction to and 
> resistance to the blending of the virtual and actual taking place in the 
> ordinary world around us?

No, resistance is futile. I am trying to make a statement of fact which has 
then artistic (imaginative) capabilities. However, I think that viractual 
imaginative excess stands in defiance of the limits of ordinary perception 
and representation (as noted in response to Gregory). Thus it is (or can be) 
about the opposition between the daily work day and the 
transgressive/ecstatic moment. In a sense it attempts to set up a stable 
form of ecstatic transgression where one can go back and forth at will via 
dissimulation.

> 2. What are examples of the things you call "privileged logos" and the 
> "logocentric individual?"

Are we not all branded to death?  We all need a singular aesthetic élan 
constituted through private profusion.

> 3. What are the "conformisms' that you see as "about to overpower" the art 
> tradition?

They vary of course, but the primary offender is the acceptance of the mass 
media trance (some have called it the "new sleep" (see, for example Collins, 
T. and Milazzo, R. 1989. Hyperframes: A Post Appropriation Discourse: Vol. 
1. New Haven: Yale University Press)). It is the viractual?s 
non-representational counter-mannerist representation which, hopefully, 
breaks us out of the fascination and complicity with the mass media mode of 
communication. Thus it is a repartie (vivacious spiritual response) to 
Baudrillard's view of media-bathed society.

> 4. Would it be accurate to say you are trying to use digital technology and 
> mathematical science to.
> give painting qualities that maintain its importance and relevance as an 
> art form in the contemporary world?

Yes it is. I love art history. What excited me in this respect was that I 
noticed that dithyrambic visual hyper-logics have manifested in all modes of 
decadent artistic periods; from the Hellenistic and Flamboyant Gothic, to 
the Mannerist, Rococo, and Fin-de-Siècle, as they all opposed dogmatically 
imposed ocular paradigms with hyper-engendering strategies. I think that we 
are living in a deeply decadent time (I?m not speaking as a moralist here, 
but as a formalist) so a viractual hyper-logic is appropriate.

> 5. Are you proposing immersive art as a cure for immersive (informationally 
> overwhelming) technology? If so, how does the audience know when it is 
> immersed in art rather than reality as altered by corporations or 
> governments?

No.

> 6. Aside from the sheer enormity of the material that digital reductionism 
> opens to manipulation, if we look at it from the artist's viewpoint, how 
> does this differ from the universe of possibility open to the aboriginal 
> potter who begins work with  a lump of completely malleable material? In 
> other words, please clarify your understanding of the special situation or 
> predicament facing the artist in present conditions.

I think that my last statement dump may have covered this for you. With 
virtuality, modes of production and representation collapse into a realm 
neither real nor imaginary, but simulatory. In this sense, digital media 
implodes into the actual to such an extent that we no longer know what 
effects the digital realm has on life in our society or how we process the 
virtual. Thus we are in need of constructing a theory of a circular totality 
without (apparently) an outside.

As noted, with virtuality we are probing at the outer limits of recognizable 
representation. The excited all-over fullness and fervor of this 
syncretistic probe into the viractual isn't a failing of communication then 
-it is our subject.


> Biographical Note: I call myself an artist and inventor living and working 
> in New York City. I have done one computer-generated work called NewZoid. I 
> intend to do more. Because the things I want to do take me a year or two to 
> write the lexical data base I can't produce much. I have one "academic" 
> qualification in this area - a B in the Design and Personality course given 
> by Milton Glaser at the School of Visual Arts. Prior to that I worked as a 
> lawyer in an obscure specialty. I spend most of my time doing six things, 
> eating, sleeping, admiring NewZoid, promoting it, surfing the Web and 
> working on my new projects.
>
> Thank you for putting your art and philosophy on the table.
>
> Best Wishes,
> Daniel Young








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