Re: [-empyre-] re-delineations

["James Barrett" <jim.barrett@humlab.umu.se>]

The 90 minute film "The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord is
available online for viewing and download thanks to UBUWEB:
http://www.ubu.com/film/debord_society.html
To watch it, for me, was to be re-educated as to the power of images and
the deadly grip they can have on our minds;
"whatever means are available to deal with something"
Yes, I agree with you Ryan, hacking is reactionary and with the present
modes of technological production in place there is little else one can
do, other than not buy the products. As a reformed Luddite myself I now do
not think it is a matter of removing or erasing the IT industry, just
steering it in the most beneficial direction for the majority of humanity
(a simple request. no?). My list of media activist acts came from a
seminar Henry Jenkins gave here in Sweden recently when he was outlining
his theories on what he calls convergent media. It is strategic but the
aims are clear. :
"Citing Manuel Castells text The Internet Galaxy (2001) Henry spoke of
"the convergence within" and quoted Castells in that "we do have a
hypertext, the hypertext is inside us". Henry outlined his own brief here
as defining the terrain of digital media and presenting issues of
convergence of old and new media. The next reference was to a slightly
older text; Ithiel de Sola Pool's The Technologies of Freedom (1983) which
outlined Convergence as a process, rather than a result and asserted that
moments of convergence are matched by moments of divergence. Henry defined
here the difference between 'Participation' and 'Interactivity' in media.
'Interactive' is media as more responsive to feedback and the constraints
to which are technologically based. 'Participation' in media is a social
and cultural factor which can be manifest in a number of ways; legally,
economically, and of course in the technological configuration of the
media form itself. Clearly the boundaries of participation are overlapping
and morphological."
Taken from the HUMlab blog (my entry)
http://blog.humlab.umu.se/archives/2005_01.html


/jim

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jordan Williams" <jordan@cartocorpus.com>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Sent: Saturday, April 09, 2005 3:21 AM
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] re-delineations
>
>
>> 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
>
> ????
>
> Not Debord !
> -or yes: but in the side of Constant (it is his surname and name:
> Nieuwenhuys), painter, sculptor and architect himself in Nederlands (who
> could be considerred as the inventor of the unitarian urban planning
> regarding the psychogeographic drift - he was a founder of situtationism
> emerging from COBRA) -IS was a united critical by and emerging from
> COBRA-International lettrism-and Physchogeographic Institute of London.
>
> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=constant%3B+international+situationnist&btnG=Rechercher&meta=
>
> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=constant%3B+international+situationist&spell=1
>
> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=constant%3B+biography%3Binternational+situationist&btnG=Rechercher&meta=
>
> whose first works of Rem Koolhaas (specially of New York delirius) are
> appreciative.
>
> The idea of the social-urbanistic transgression in matter of symbolistic
> materialist critical practice would not take place without Constant (who
> is
> dead I mean in 2003 (?) - he was the guest at Kassel, Dokumenta 2002).
>
> At last this circle being closed at the moment of the IS divide, under the
> acts of the radical Mustapha Khayati (who is still living) really nearest
> to
> Debord after Strasbourg.
>
> http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=mustapha+khayati&spell=1
>
> to read any letters in French to a publisher concernning the question of
> Strasbourg manifesto to be republished:
> http://www.larevuedesressources.org/article.php3?id_article=57
>
>> and film in order to resist and transgress, while at the same
>
>> time decrying instances of new media which were oppressive.
>
> I agree
>
>>
>> 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
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
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>> >
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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-- 
Doctoral Student, Umeå University
Department of Modern Languages/English
+46 (0)90 786 6584
HUMlab.Umeå University.SE-901 87.Umeå.Sweden
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