RE: [-empyre-] re-delineations

hight@34n118w.net · Sat, 9 Apr 2005 18:58:41 -0700 (PDT)

>yes.  That is the second part of what so concerns me.  The current
administration is a master of the semotic weight and measure and spin.

This needs to be taken into account and also the tools at hand in new
media.  I wish I had some concrete answers but I do not.    I think the
smart mob concept was a great way to react to cue immediately and en
masse. This perhaps could be a new sense of protest, commentary and
response as opposed to an organized protest that takes time and falls into
the old semiotic read that is so often spun against dissent (spun as
disorganized, minimized, seen as the ragged intelligentsia etc..).

An event or  a speech could nearly immediately trigger a massive and
organized response in key symbolic places.

off to see some art,

more later,

jeremy

 yip. empowerment or "agency". The alternat(iv)e voice. So what is it,
> where does it come from, what fires it up, what does it do?
>
> Debord shot himself through the heart so there'd be no ambiguity about his
> suicide. Ten and a half years ago.
>
> So what do we do NOW?
>
> sjn
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: empyre-bounces@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au on behalf of
> hight@34n118w.net
> Sent: Sat 09/04/2005 04:49
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] re-delineations
>
>
>
> Anything can be seen as a tool or element of  capitalism.   Anything can
> be construed as a tool if placed in such a broad context.  The same
> argument applies to photography, text, video, projection of image,
> etc...........
>
> The voice of commentary and dissent also can be conveyed using any tools
> (as long as it is seen, read,heard by one other person, by definition, it
> has fortified a communication channel).
>
> The question to me is more of how to utilize the tools to reinvest and
> revitalize the alternate voice.
>
> To worry about something being a capitalist tool is to worry about the
> wrong thing.  The issue is action, dissemination, context and voice.
>
>
> How do concepts like smart mobs and wireless evolve into an area of use as
>  organized spatially driven, immediate and broad reaching (potentially)
> commentary, voice and empowerment?
>
> that is more immediately the issue to me anyway.
>
> jeremy
>
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>  But, saying that new media art practice might not be able to be
>> transgressive politically because it uses a form that is employed by,
>> implicated in capitalism is akin to saying that words cannot be used to
>> transgress. After all, words/writing as a form are the tools par
>> excellence
>> of capitalism - the coding mechanism found in the law for example. This
>> seems to me to be as problematic as saying that all new media is
>> necessarily
>> transgressive because it is 'rhizomatic'.
>>
>> How does one artistically transgress without representing - and how does
>> one
>> represent without using some form - the body, writing, new media, the
>> canvas
>> - that has not been born out of or appropriated by capitalism?
>>
>> I think Debord would appropriate new media as he appropriated
>> architecture,
>> cartography and film in order to resist and transgress, while at the
>> same
>> time decrying instances of new media which were oppressive.
>>
>> Jordan
>>
>>
>> On 9/4/05 7:45 AM, "Patrick Simons" <patricksimons@gloriousninth.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Phew
>>> Well I suppose I overstated the extent to which critical engagement is
>>> the
>>> poor loser in the dialogue between art and life and Christiane et al
>>> are
>>> surely right to question the simplistic nature of my case....
>>> BUT
>>> Ryan's got it right surely when he points out the correlation between
>>> the
>>> focus and perceived solutions for the IT sector (perhaps the military
>>> industrial complex locates it more accurately) are very very close.
>>>
>>> The growth of Sci-Art funding, the use of media art as spectacle, the
>>> attempts to commodify net art, to develop models of consumption of open
>>> ended, networked art is institutionally driven (I suggest) and unless
>>> this
>>> process of incorporation is resisted then I think the fine balance
>>> between
>>> making work with and about high end capitalisation falls into becoming
>>> a
>>> patsy for the technocrats.
>>>
>>> I wonder what Guy Debord would have made of the situation?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> on 4/8/05 5:43, ryan griffis at grifray@yahoo.com wrote:
>>>
>>>> i think Christiane and James' reminders in the projects that are out
>>>> there is important. there is some great work that is taking technology
>>>> on within a political economic framework.
>>>> i do think it's important though to keep this in its avant garde
>>>> context... there may seem to be a good number of publications out
>>>> there
>>>> that do take a critical look at IT and art, but that number becomes
>>>> marginal in the larger scope of publications that take the form of
>>>> design manuals, technical guides and otherwise celebratory accounts of
>>>> technology. there's a whole other world of "computer art" out there
>>>> that isn't even part of this conversation.
>>>> my question comes from a perspective familiar with institutional
>>>> critique and politically oriented conceptual art as well as tactical
>>>> media. i'm wondering how art using IT can also be a criticism of it,
>>>> in
>>>> a meaningful sense. with the histories of conceptual art and inst.
>>>> crit. pretty accessible now, i think there is firm ground from which
>>>> to
>>>> ask how these practices' challenges hold up. i'm wondering how art
>>>> that
>>>> relies on the same mechanisms it is trying to critique presents a
>>>> meaningful challenge to those mechanisms. this seems especially
>>>> relevant to tech-based art, which is utilizing, without question, one
>>>> of the most rapidly developing product markets as a base. there are
>>>> all
>>>> kinds of concerns here, from labor to environmental justice. at the
>>>> least, i think we could be asking what is driving our need to solve
>>>> problems through technology in the way that we are. how are we even
>>>> arriving at a consensus of what the problems are? my feeling is that
>>>> the problems a lot of IT-based art, even the critical work, seems to
>>>> ask are very similar to the ones the IT industry is -  and the
>>>> solutions are: more technology, more places.
>>>> i realize that there are fissures in all of this, and many holes in
>>>> the
>>>> way i'm framing it, but i think the questions remain pertinent.
>>>> i don't buy James' assertion that hacking products necessarily changes
>>>> our relationship to the process of
>>>> production/distribution/consumption.
>>>> i may run linux on my iPod and use it to record and podcast community
>>>> meetings, but i still bought the iPod, will most likely pay for a new
>>>> battery when the short life span on the current one dies. i'll also
>>>> use
>>>> it mostly like everyone else, to play music in my own little bubble as
>>>> i move through the city. critical art ensemble (among others) have
>>>> noted that open source and hacking are not intrinsically oppositional
>>>> to capital.
>>>> yes, "this is what democracy looks like" made use of the ubiquity of
>>>> digital video equipment to make a political document that could be
>>>> distributed and inform thousands more than were actually there about
>>>> what when on in Seattle and why. but this project, like tactical media
>>>> in general, is just that - "tactical," not strategic. it's not
>>>> questioning the desire for and use of the media involved, it's using
>>>> whatever means are available to deal with something. tactical media is
>>>> all about short term goals, by whatever means sufficient.
>>>> in thinking about some of this, i was reminded about the reception of
>>>> Jonah Brucker-Cohen's WiFi Hog by the open wireless community.
>>>> http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/2003-August/
>>>> 007437.html
>>>> http://locative.net/tcmreader/index.php?secology;brucker-cohen
>>>> both the art project and community wireless projects are "critical,"
>>>> both are positioned against the corporate/private model of IT...
>>>> again, i'm not really certain where i'm going with this, so i
>>>> apologize
>>>> for the luddite-sounding rant.
>>>> best, ryan
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
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