Re: [-empyre-] psychogeographies - opening statement

"Melinda Rackham" <melinda@subtle.net> · Sat, 19 Apr 2003 14:53:27 +1000

Brendan wrote:
> 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

 I think this is interresting that we have a rationalisation system..
i thought about bretts training post.  i looked at the numbers, and knew
that it was data which I could have input in different ways to a number of
different applications and gotten different outcomes, from colour values, to
a  VRML terrain maps, to a soundcscape. i coudl have  not even used a
computer , but a set of couloured crayons and assigned a colour  to each
number and made a nice stripey drawing.. etc etc.. it coudl have been wall
paper design.. the numbers seem to have a life of thier own and they can
mutate to different forms..

so any meaning  generated by context only exists in relation to our de- and
recoding mechanisms and machines.. i keep coming back to a phrase of
Ollivier Dyens in Metal and Flesh that " computers are just human beings
fused to thier niches.."  (pardon my paraphrasing)  that we exist in an
intelligent condition , and everything else that we see , touch, think , do
is part of that intelligence.. that code crunching.
so here we are folded into a big mandelbrot set.. and the order and entropy
of the universe get played out in a filing system..

m

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brendan Howell" <mute@netaxs.com>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2003 4:22 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] psychogeographies - opening statement

> 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

> 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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> >> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >>
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>
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