Re: [-empyre-] psychogeographies - opening statement

Brendan Howell <mute@netaxs.com> · Wed, 9 Apr 2003 08:22:51 +0200

guns into plowshares into guns into plowshares into guns...
Gunpowder was invented for art.  I don't see the artistic agenda hidden 
in cluster bombs.
I know that the first real digital computers were built for military 
uses but there were many precursors.  Pascal's tabulating machine, the 
abacus, Babbage's experiments, mechanical tabulators, Jacquard's loom, 
etc..  To me the oppression inherent in the computer is more in line 
with the oppression of accountants and statisticians.  My mac does not 
give me the urge to calculate artillery trajectories into my 
neighboring building any more than a philips screwdriver compels one to 
stab a mammoth.  However, I think the creepy demon inside the machine 
is the one that forces me to organize parts of my existence into clean 
data sets and calculable results.  It's more of a structuralist utopia 
of order and control.  There is a violence inherent in this agenda but 
it's more subtle and empyrean than military to me.  But I can see why 
this technology was attractive to the military and so easily co-opted.
I think the military is inherent in many parts of our culture just as 
much as technology.  Just look at language, film and social structures. 
 They all trade symbols and concepts back and forth with the military.  
As artists we can use military derived technology to corrupt military 
influence and I don't think it has to be ironic.  But we also have to 
accept that our products may be hijacked for violent purposes and we 
need to work on strategies against this.
As a bit of an aside, the media overdose of the last month gives me the 
feeling that this war seems like a video game the way it's presented:  
quick cuts, lossy mpeg video footage, 3d missile simulations, zooming 
maps, retired colonels drawing football coach style attack diagrams.  
The narratives cut back and forth between different small scale stories 
and overall pictures.  This contrasts the presentation of the last gulf 
war, which was more filmic, serial and consistent in its point of view. 
 It would be nice if the second gulf war did not exist either but I 
think a lot of hungry, shell shocked people trying to eat their 
"freedom" may beg to differ.
-Brendan
On Donnerstag, April 3, 2003, at 06:24  Uhr, Brett Stalbaum wrote:
I wish I had time this AM to give a more organized answer to Jim 
Andrew's

valid question. There was a reason I indicated that I am not sure in my

previous post. I'm a technological realist. I most often fall on the 
side

of technology being neutral, and prefer to hold people responsible for 
how

technology is used or abused.  I don't feel, at least very acutely, the

(supposed) taint that some feel adheres to technology just because it 
was

developed by the military. I am not convinced that the armed vision 
that

Crandall correctly identifies is necessarily self-fulfilling because of

its origins. The internet, electronic computation, database, GPS, maps 
all

of these have civilian uses that are important and good making. Alan

Turing may have been the single person most responsible for the allied

victory in WWII, an accomplishment that I certainly celebrate. Our

asses were saved from the Nazi's by a gay genius. History is rarely

more beautiful than that.
Further, I don't deny that the military has an important role to play 
in

liberal democratic societies, as long as the influence of the military 
in

democratic decision making is properly depoliticized. (Although in my

country, the relation between the military and business/government is 
way

too cozy. That is another conversation.) To shorten my thoughts on 
this, I

appreciate meteorology, recognize the strong relation between a map 
and a

satellite photo, and recognize (even celebrate) that GIS related

technologies are a ubiquitous part of daily life. What is it like to 
live

with these technologies and our embeddedness in them? How does GIS 
change

the act of taking a hike, or our aesthetic appreciation of the 
landscape?

How does GIS change narrative? Or how can it? Or how should it?
So can software art deconstruct the war machine? I don't believe so, at

least in the direct and powerful sense (or feeling) that post-modernist

thought often intensely or intoxicatingly assumes. We are artists. We 
are

not that powerful. (I'm interested in hubristic pursuits for artists, 
but

not quixotic ones.) But do artists have a stake in the use, 
development,

and ultimately an influence on the cultural manifestations of military

derived technologies? Again, I am not sure, but I hope so, because I 
have

a lot of faith in artists...

On Thu, 3 Apr 2003, Jim Andrews wrote:
Well said, Brett.
On the Eu-gene list concerned with generative art, Rob Myers said, in 
response to my question

'how can software art deconstruct the war machines?' that:
"Computing and computer graphics have been driven by the military and 
have been trickle-down-ed

through the military-industrial-entertainment complex to regiment 
postindustrial society.

Computer art is the aestheticization of oppression, a self-delusional 
liberal sales pitch for

smart bombs.
Deconstructing the war machines with software art is like protesting 
against debt by buying a

slogan t-shirt with a credit card. Irony can be dusted off here 
without too much eye-rolling,

though, and an implosion (LINUX) or closure (Dilbert) could be 
effective."
So let me put the question to you, if I may: how can software art 
deconstruct the war machines?
ja
-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]On Behalf Of Brett
Stalbaum
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 2:48 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] psychogeographies - opening statement

Regarding the "neutral" representation of the weather, I am reminded 
of

Crandall's statement "Where the terrestrial image has an object, the

aerial image has a target." (Anything that Moves: Armed Vision)

"[T] he projectile-gaze captures its object, freezes it, holds it in 
a tracking

mode, intercourses it, obliterates it, couches it in a mechanism of

protection." Would I be stretching the case to note that Teri's

observation about something as initially innocuous as the 
visualizations

given in a (battlefield) weather report can be connected to the 
"projectile

gaze" in such way that we could reasonably say that such images are

representations bound to a "tracking mode... obliterate[ing]... 
couch[ed]

in a mechanism of protection"; or perhaps even a visual proxy for

US/British/Australian foreign policy? I am not sure.
But I had a telling experience the other day. I don't own a 
television, so

my interface to this war's media is mostly through radio and news 
sites on

the web. But I did actually experience the same "battlefield weather

reports" that Teri refers to, but instead of in my home, it was 
embedded

in a multi-media enabled gasoline pump, pumping both petrol into my 
truck,

and the latest war analysis by Wolf Blitzer (followed by the 
battlefield

weather), into myself. That we can see CNN reporting the war on a 
video

screen in our gas pumps is yet another example of why it is so hard 
to be

an artist today, especially if you work ironically. I was struck by 
the

notion that the pump would make a great installation in a gallery 
space,

as a readymade.
But I live in the United States, which is rapidly becoming an 
irony-free

zone.

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