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

[fizzion <fizzion@optusnet.com.au>]

Funny how the topic of energy has come up just now.
For the past nearly 20 years or so much of my work has had the focus of
energy as its subject. In drawings, both traditional media and digital. See
my pdf at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~fizzion/artbio1.pdf
for a couple of examples. Naturally, thinking about energy all the time
brings an understanding of just how pervasive an idea can be - everything is
energy from the singing atoms in our bodies, our thoughts, to spinning
stars, the galaxy etc.
How to express it, so far a traditional image making approach has been the
way for me, but working digitally means considering the energy of the web
and connectivity. Bringing the energy of diverse others together to produce
an agreeable whirlpool of, what? An electro-celestial choir? Maybe if we can
upload ourselves one day in the far distant future into some kind of
infinite computer we will become aware though new and multiple senses of
what it feels like to be a star, a starfish, an ocean ...
Meanwhile, here at my desk, with a glass of red wine, I am trying to think
of what might be a nice way to get Flash to buzz and hum in a more seductive
way.

Barrie

ps Char Davies made a virtual world (osmose I think) where one could sink
through a landscape of trees, streams etc, to a field of text beneath
everything, the text being the code that generated the environment of the
artwork. Kind of nicely self referential, amusing and profound.

> From: John Hopkins <jhopkins@uiah.fi>
> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 14:11:18 -0600
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Welcome Jim Andrews  re: Electronic Poetry
> 
>> 
>>> 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!
> 
> Okay, three paragraphs, not enough time to go into details.  I
> usually take a week in my workshops to get over Newtonian worldviews
> which have gotten us into the HUGE f*%#^king mess we are in these
> days, and move on to idiosyncratic and ultimately individual world
> views that validate each persons sensual experience in the world, and
> free people from the onerous burden of having to justify the
> uniqueness of their vision to a largely hostile socio-cultural
> matrix...
> 
> Strangely enough, from this 'energy' based worldview, language is
> placed squarely into a space of being just a socialized abstraction
> for trading models between self and other.  Language is not an actual
> carrier of the energy (as voice and expiration and vibrating vocal
> cords ARE, the actual language is NOT)...  Language has nothing to do
> with that which is described (the map is not the territory).  Or at
> least there is a final and complete gap between what any model system
> seeks to describe/circumscribe and the sensual, energized experience
> or presence itself...  we can dance around the Void with all our
> models, but it still comes down to the impossibility of re-creating
> or re-presenting lived presence and be-ing...
> 
> Have I dug a deep enough hole for meself?
> 
> 
> JH
> -~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> network artist & visiting lecturer
> dept of fine arts
> university of colorado - boulder
> mobile: +1 303 859 0689 GMT-7
> office: +1 303 492 6797
> domain: http://neoscenes.net
> email: <jhopkins@colorado.edu>
> 
> 
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