[-empyre-] Caviar picnic

["Sally Jane Norman" <S.J.Norman@newcastle.ac.uk>]

Dear empiricists,

Thanx for generous insights and advance apologies for ad lib response to
some highly articulate posts. Choice between jumping in cold or lurking
and kicking oneself.

Jordan Crandall's "operational construct" (delightful Freudian lapsus as
"observational construct" Christina?) is an interesting one. And/ but it
tweaks my mind as usual into wondering about how (much) we tend to
overlook a host of deeply ingrained operational constructs that drive
perception in its ostensibly most neutral forms. The old stuff from
physiological optics or acoustics that refers to sensitivity to colour
and texture and timbre as a function of familiar environments,
occupations, etc. It may sound trite in circles that are thrashing out
heavy concepts of indoctrination, with a focus on machine-aided
processes of perception. But it's funny how easily we forget the
machine- or instrument-aided processes of perception that drove earliest
physiological research - Alhazen, Bacon et al. And (appreciably)
formulate ideas of optimised "knowledge-action-time" as though they're
specific to contemporary culture. It seems to me that cultural and
perceptive conditioning, and their related operational constructs, are
not twentieth or twenty-first century or post psychoanalytical or post
post-modern theoretical phenomena. Even if it's taken until now for us
to begin to analyse them in certain depths and terms. All the more
reason to try to keep horizons open. Including and especially historical
perspectives.

Please don't get me wrong - this isn't a criticism of theorists I find
stimulating. Rather, I'm disturbed by the overall mood which seems to be
that we're dealing with spontaneous generation and ex nihilo issues.
Whereas I suspect many of these issues are part of our permanent
negotiation with our own evolutionary processes.  Whatever the hell that
means. Without AT ALL wishing to get caught up in sterile polemicising
about French theorists, I'm often saddened by the fact that Gilbert
Simondon, who has uniquely articulated our evolutionary relation to
technical objects and prostheses, remains off the Anglophone map,
despite his having hugely influenced most of the heavily cited "picnic
generation".  

I'm also intrigued by the notion (via Drew Hemment) that locative art's
condition of possibility is a prior abstraction, with consequent
distancing from embodiment etc.  Paradoxical and keenly observed yet I
wonder how we might read the voluptuousness and sensuous explosion that
Malevich targeted with his monochromatic paintings - "prior abstraction"
par excellence. The "abstraction/ disembodiment" equation seems not to
be so simple - even though I think that Drew's point with respect to
locative media is very relevant.  Maybe Malevich fits in with the sense
of intervals Christina refers to - the Suprematists used notions of
perceptive and conceptual shifts to describe the particular kind of
aesthetic experience they were seeking. One person's abstraction may be
another person's highly figurative representation. 

Coding again? Familiarity with 'operational constructs'?  

p.s. I'm personally bored with the andro- estrocentric binary (oh
blasphemy! oh heinous infamy!). De-Re-sexed to death. Though hormones
make great caviar.

Kia ora

sjn