[-empyre-] nodes of transgression?

[Barbara Lattanzi <threads@wildernesspuppets.net>]

Hello Ben.

At this point, a simple question:

Why do computers get to have all the fun (of "forging new connections", of 
"acting" with a "mind of [its] own", of making "fascinating decisions")?

I am referring to your reply to Ken Fields when he wrote (May 6th post) 
about the idea of transgression as an important component of new knowledge:

"...Artists are professionals in jostling
this structure, with the big prize going to the one who causes major
disruption, establishment of new cultural attractors, or pushing some
critical threshold over the top..."

When you replied

quote:
> liken was conceived of as a tool for performing exactly these tasks

this statement makes me wonder how can transgression possibly figure into 
liken?  Is it accurate to say, instead, that liken aspires to be scalable 
enough to swallow in one gulp any critique necessary for "disruption"?

Isn't your desire to make liken "have its own unique creativity" 
problematic in relation to those who see software as 
ideologically-inflected as any human artifact?  (I am thinking of Matt 
Fuller's writings about software, for example).

If software acts with a mind of its own and I am simply feeding it raw 
material for its generative state, is there any point beyond Ludditism to 
be made if I go and grab a hammer?

Dan Sandin's Image Processor was developed at a historical moment that made 
its politics as legible as its aesthetics to those who used 
it.  Correspondingly, I would like to hear how you and the criticalartware 
team might characterise the contemporary political dimension of your project.

all the best,
Barbara


----------------------------------------
> On May 6, 2004, at 5:48 AM, Kenneth Fields wrote:
> > As I alluded to before - the human
> > mind is itself a network always in danger of being constrained by an ever
> > tightening matrix of network bonds. Artists are professionals in jostling
> > this structure, with the big prize going to the one who causes major
> > disruption, establishment of new cultural attractors, or pushing some
> > critical threshold over the top.

At 03:01 AM 5/8/2004, ben syverson wrote:

> Most definitely, and liken was conceived of as a tool for performing 
> exactly these tasks.
> By forging new connections and acting as a kind of mind of its own, liken 
> encourages people to build new neural pathways and reexamine old ones.
>
> And much like a group of people can often come up with ideas that none of 
> them individually would have, I honestly feel that the distributed network 
> of liken has its own unique creativity. I could be perceived as 
> anthropomorphizing/romanticizing liken, but as it grows, I see it make 
> fascinating decisions.