Re: [-empyre-] making a meta-living / a-life & generative art

[Simon Taylor <swht@clear.net.nz>]

clearly I'm not alone in deploring the use of the word or term [!?]
'sublime' in regard to art and works considering its provenance.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mitchell Whitelaw" <mitchell.whitelaw@canberra.edu.au>
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2004 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] making a meta-living / a-life & generative art


> On 23/11/2004, at 7:59 AM, <notnot@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > Could this movement to hermetic purity of code in itself be a reaction
> > to our contemporary visual culture? An escape maybe from the
> > omnipresence
> > of images addressing our complex social political and economic reality.
>
> Yes, I think that's partly right - but I think that our visual culture
> actually (in general) does _not_ address our complex reality, partly
> because it's a very hard thing to make an image of. We see images from
> its surface, "appearances" of it, but how do you make an image of
> something so dynamic, complex, multifarious, etc.?
>
> One thing that a-life and generative art can do in setting up these
> "aquaria" (exactly), is play with complex dynamic systems in miniature,
> and perhaps discover or intuit some of their properties. Australian
> a-life artist Rod Berry talks about trying to encourage an "aesthetic
> of systems" rather than one of "images" with his work. Of course
> there's Jack Burnham's 1968 "Systems Aesthetics."
>
> Which brings us right to the sublime, the unrepresentable vastness of
> nature/culture/global capital. I agree with Jon and Alan's analysis.
> Also speaking of sublime and Manovich, there's his paper "The
> Anti-Sublime Ideal in Data Art" -
> http://www.chairetmetal.com/cm07/manovich-complet.htm
>
> Mitchell
>
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