RE: [-empyre-] Welcome Jim Andrews re: Electronic Poetry

[Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>]

hi john,

after I posted and thought more about your interesting comments on 'energy and art', I wanted to
add the term 'experiential' to the relevant terms in that poetics. In her introduction to Paris
Connection (http://turbulence.org/curators/Paris/introthoringtonenglish.htm ), Helen Thorington
remarked about the work of the six French artists that "What you get with these artists is an
experience". It is 'experiential' in various ways. Helen says:

"There is a huge difference, a friend recently remarked, between learning and experiencing. What
you get with these artists is an experience. And it’s easy. This, by the way, is a compliment.
In a medium where work can so easily exhaust you with complications, overload you with
information, take so much time to navigate that you end up, metaphorically at least, tearing
your hair out in frustration, here are simple works that use the medium, are easily accessible
and in which one can sense both the presence of the artists (still) and their human concerns.

“Simple things are often beautiful! No?" (Durieu)

Yes they are."

I would add that the 'energy' of the 'experience' is, in part, owing to superior programming.
That said, one should add that the contributions from the other artists are also superior. See
how they dovetail into collaborations of n-1 dimensions. The arts and programming are in
relatively strong relation in this work, particularly in the work of Schmitt, Durieu, Lamarque,
and servovalve. Clauss understands how to synthesize media types in some ways, and also his
content is photographically more rich than the others; he paints with Director inks and
processes, and the content has often been called "poetical" though written language is often not
central or is absent altogether. Poetical? Howso? Well, not simply in the lyric, but in the
'language' of his interactive motion pictures.

An 'energy'. An 'experience'. An 'interaction'. A 'collaboration'. A 'language'.

ja


> >>  We are embodied and it is essential to our world view, to our joy, our pain,
> >>  our vulnerability, our hopes, life, and death. If we lose 'touch' with our
> >>  embodiment we lose touch with ourselves and with others and their pain and
> >>  joys, and hopes and aspirations, our shared mortality. And thereby also our
> >  > wisdom, empathy, self understanding, and breath.
>
> this posting moved me to the following brief -- not directly on
> topic, but as it indirectly/directly applies to many posts in
> principle, here goes...
>
> Embodiment -- seems still to be totally bound to a materialistic view
> of the world -- as are much of the commentary so far.  A much more
> accurate tool for mapping is to move beyond
> Newtonian/materialistic/mechanistic ways of modeling the noumenal
> would (including our selves) and apply some Quantum/Taoist & other
> models (for brevities sake, although this issue does take LONG
> dialogue to get to the principles of, more than can be allowed here,
> and is NOT bound to those particular modeling systems, just using
> them as possible starting points)...
>
> If one takes a reduced interpretation of Quantum and looks at touch,
> for example, touch becomes the energized interaction between two
> states of a universal energy field.  the two 'objects' coming into
> (cartesian) contact merely expressions of that universal field in
> different energized conditions...
>
> Much further along this line, an art 'object' is (nothing more than )
> a difference in energy 'condition' (language is woefully short, as is
> contemporary mathematics to accurately model this energized
> universe).  From this point of view, taking my embodied energy state
> (I am a being of energy), I use energy to transform, change the
> states of regions around me (impossible to get away from Cartesian
> language!), and allow those changed regions re-radiate to the Other,
> to be received as 'inspiration' (or not).  The actual mediated 'form'
> (a now-defunct word in this system) is, literally, immaterial.
> Whether I use a painting or 20000 km of cable, mouse, screen,
> processor, and keyboard (AND electric energy).  The crux is how I
> gather my energy together, focus it in attentive and concentrated
> measure to leap the abyss from the Self to the Other with that
> energy.  NOT the materialist form, that is an obsolete way to model
> the exchange!