Re: [-empyre-] tangent: software / conceptual art

["Aliette Guibert" <guibertc@criticalsecret.com>]

Dear all,

Just I was writing this mail Mitchell had still posted his one and quote the
Darwinian theory of cells prescribing the theory of gene. So I have answered
soon with any links and quote to edify for my part his suggestion.

The thorough question is of ideology in analogical device. Understanding
and explaining is not
edify an ideological critical device about computational arts and
no more about sciences ; or how could we pretend build 'new in this
metapolitical-economical world? Now, instead of act "meta" could we act
"primitive": that is the real question. Could be not? Could be yes?

First, "life" as concept is a directional and chronological reference to
material and materialistic life on earth (which has a beginning and a end) -
anything looking to monotheist vision or naturalistic coming from
the technics to the modern history
- even at Engels: "dialectics of the nature") - or you transmute the term
into a sign ; just a sign not an organically concept (if you would do it
without a mark of the difference as model out of the space-time
regarding only the languages as bichronistic/multichonistic grammar
(as the codes, for example)
but not as a linear statement of the cultural language, and more of their
effects.

Second, the most of this current term even on artificial life still regards
Aristotle physical categories as a hierarchy of the being (could it be
a no-Euclidian geometry - even fractal geography - it would be the same)...
that is exactly the question of the
relevance or irrelevance of reductionism regarding its own object of
research (denying of the environmental condition) to a hierarchy of process
between their object the society and God. The key would be the genome? But
now we know of it and same time we discover that genome is not the key of
life in matter of flexibility and complexity.

All the new theories in Medicine and Biology goes forward the Aristotle
universe and the gene theory of the life. Now they work on the flexibility
and the plasticity of environmental conditions as equal part of the
phenomena's
and going in a unit and diverse complexity - perhaps the effect has less
importance regarding the
life even it looks to be the life itself - but in a condition to be this or
not. In Astrophysics or Physics of the particles, after they have imagined
that they'll never see any "bodies" but only their environmental effects or
to other elements - and this suppose that such a body could not exist. The
theory of languages applied to gene theory gives phenomena's but not destiny
(Predictable/Unpredictable without limit): only fate (Predictable).

Now they are in a primitive disposition returning to Empirism, and refering
only statistics to predict the effects or consequences
not searching objects.

The analogical concept of artificial live comes from the cybernetics
universes from 1940 or 43, it is an early naturalistic concept that would
aks another view, more organical right now.

So any use of this past device about prospective arts and creative device
cannot be relevant or arguing from an analogical or ideological device - not
relevant to equip the creative innovation and more could be with a risk of
reproduction.

But, it can be obvious at work that any misunderstanding could be useful to
give a wrong name but a real name to help for imagination of universes.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Brown" <paul@paul-brown.com>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 1:39 AM
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] tangent: software / conceptual art


> >Yes, to think, as Florian does, that:
> >
> >"{5: No computer can reprogram itself; self-programming is only possible
> >within a limited framework of game rules written by a human programmer. A
> >machine can behave differently than expected, because the rules didn't
> >foresee all situations they could create, but no machine can overwrite
its
> >own rules by itself.}"
> >
> >is a misunderstanding of the nature of computers and what they are
capable
> >of. There is no proof, and there is very likely never to be any--popular
> >falacies from Penrose not withstanding--that the processes which
computers
> >are capable of are any less flexible than thought itself. Were Florian's
> >statement true, it would demonstrate that there's a thought process
> >(self-modification) of which humans are capable and computers are not.
But
> >it isn't so. It does seem that this sort of misunderstanding is
widespread
> >and often fondly held.
>
> It's my opinion that the new aesthetic emerging from interdisciplinary
> collaborations (including the computational arts) will eventually
undermine
> and destroy the long outmoded beliefs of the current artworld status quo.
> Somewhere, deep down (in their subconscious?) they know this and react
> as humans always have done by rejecting the new, denying its credibility.
> We only have to look at the Salon des Refuses for an example - one of the
> Parisian critics actually spat at the works on show.  He must have felt
> they were a complete insult to everything he hled dear. Kuhn in the
> Structure of
> Scientific Revolutions said that ..."disciplines change when old men die".
> Thanks to the inherent conservatism of the arts and their lack of a
logical
> foundation and language revolutions here take a lot longer to come to
term!
> It was 100 years before the ideas expressed in the Salon des Refuses
> entered British art education with the publication of the Coldstream
> Report in (1963 I think).
>
> But maybe this tangent is moving too far from the centre and we should
> ask Mitchell to pull us back into line?
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