Re: [-empyre-] nodes of transgression?
Dear Ben, Barbara and all,
I have been thinking too about the subjective presence of liken, having
played around on the criticalartware site off and on in the past week.
I am interested in a feeling that seems to arise from the experience of the
site, that liken is itself a presence or is the subject of criticalartware.
It is the subject gazing at me as I move around and try to see around the
corners and find my way. It hides the connections and links so I have to
find them and build them, but, I donĀ¹t know whether the links and
connections are stable or unstable over time. Liken grows in a process that
uses my participation. Like being covered with lichen. A a. i. life form.
All process, like, likening to, nature (natural selection)?
If liken has its own unique creativity, then, if it 'has' something, it is a
subject. Does nature have something, or is it what it is (non possessive)?
If liken is a possessor of creativity, it splits from its process state: it
becomes a proto-conscious chooser. It discriminates. Can a subject such
as liken make choices? (presumably the 'will' behind the creative act of
choosing)? Does this then make it possible to think of liken as
non-ideological, ie not touched by, or outside, the universe of
values/discrimination? Can it transgress creatively and still remain
a pure process (like(n) natural selection)? \
Christina
On 5/9/04 7:58 PM, "Barbara Lattanzi" <threads@wildernesspuppets.net>
wrote:
> 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.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
--
Slipstream transmedias : soundart performance cinema installation
architectures network theory
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
<www.naxsmash.net/inscapes>
Lecturer, Department of Architecture, c/o Hargrave Studio, California
Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, California
This archive was generated by a fusion of
Pipermail 0.09 (Mailman edition) and
MHonArc 2.6.8.