Re: [-empyre-] Re:oh my god

[Andrew Murphie <a.murphie@unsw.edu.au>]

Great discussion...

1. any code or language is a way of corralling forces (i.e. electrical 
forces, variations in voltage for example as zeroes and ones, 
ingredients in a recipe for making cakes, etc) ...for me, language is 
one way and one way only of gathering forces, a bit like gathering 
forces into packets to distribute them efficiently across the internet. 
The mistake, in my view at least, is perhaps to think the gathering 
comes before the forces, or that any gathering is a matter of language 
or code... .. also, for me, all this means that language is far from 
abstract ... its gathering of forces is on every occasion specific and 
with specific direction and force

2. languages, codes or algorithms are not the only ways to corral 
forces ... there are techniques which are not codes strictly speaking - 
or never only codes ... there is, as Ian mentioned, 
choreography...there is colour and other forms of intensity that seem 
very difficult to incorporate into codes, etc .. For me, art is firstly 
about this intensity rather than firstly a communication through codes 
....  - even when explicitly engaging with codes and languages art 
(more than for example, the social sciences) deals with the forces 
involved in acts of coding - or to put this differently art seems to 
foreground the intensities that codes and algorithms are attempting to 
grapple with or simply express ... art defined as intensity includes 
digital art, which deals with digital, networked intensities .... but 
the temptation is to think that digital art is completely contained 
within code and algorithm, and even just 'about' code ... this would be 
like saying that dancing is only about choreography or that music is 
about the score ...

3. this corralling of forces is not only human of course

4. if you see why language. code and algorithms are not the only 
participants in networks of forces - then voids, etc become very 
important precisely in terms of intensities - language, as a coralling 
of forces has its voids but so do other nexes of forces. All this means 
that structure is as much about intensity as code or algorithm.

5. networks make this more obvious and they don't just make 
'communication' possible - they further intensify intensities. Networks 
look all the more coded, overcoded, complexly coded, and indeed as 
interactions of codes and algorithms they are, but it would be a 
mistake to overlook that in networks which is not coded - the voids 
certainly but also other forms of intensity ... digital art is a 
powerful and intense expression of networking precisely when networks 
are not only taken as code or algorithm,.. digital art is about the 
dancing of networks ... the music of networks ...

best , a
--
"I thought I had reached port; but I seemed to be cast
back again into the open sea" (Deleuze and Guattari, after Leibniz)

Dr Andrew Murphie - Senior Lecturer
School of Media and Communications, University of New South Wales, 
Sydney, Australia, 2052
web:http://mdcm.arts.unsw.edu.au/homepage/StaffPages/Murphie/
fax:612 93856812 tlf:612 93855548 email: a.murphie@unsw.edu.au
room 311H, Webster Building