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






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