[-empyre-] empyre and empire - retour des choses, or, taking off, with ballast

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

if ballast  is the subject of  -empyre- ,

let's call it x

since we don't know what it is (yet).




Let us consider the set  [ technology never-not human ] ,

 invert it [technology always-already human]



  and then make a  recursive equation  to solve for x

 (technology never-not human)
_________________________

(technology always-already human)



x =  ( technology never-already human ) (technology always-not human).



Thus we ascend (in a mobius spiral) to the empyrean like a hot air  
balloon with a leak.


just having fun...



---and speaking of retour des choses,

I want to quote from Tropicalia 2  : As Coisas  Electra Nonesuch  
Records 1993

( Gilberto Gil music, lyris Arnauldo Antunes)

As coisas tem peso,
mass, volume, tamahno,
tempo, forma, cor,
posicao, textura, duracao,
densidade, cheiro, valor,
consistencia, profundidade,
contorno, temperatura,
funcao, aparencia, preco
destino, idade, sentido,
as coisas nao tem paz.



things have weight
 mass, volume, size
time, form, color
position, texture, duration,
density, smell, value,
consistency, depth,
contour, temperature,
function, appearance, price,
destiny, age, meaning
things have no peace


to listen http://christinamcphee.net/merz_city/texts/ascoisas.html



Double inversion: the retour des choses is not just a feedback loop  
as in modernist dynamics but a mobius strip, and probably, has no  
peace (or piece! :-). Not even furniture.


Lucio writes,


> > The question of humanization of tech have been discussed in many
> > symposiums but it always seems strange to me. At least computers are
> > the most human machine I've ever heard about. It has a screen that  
> > can
> > only be "viewed" by frontal human eyes, over a keyboard, something
> > that can be typed only by fingers that have the abilities to do it.
> > BTW, "digital" comes from Latin "digitum" which means "digitum" (the
> > remark is from one of the main poets of my country Decio Pignatari).
> >
> > Mediated performance could mean something that would offer a new
> > vision over the modern tradition... I leave it as a suggestion to
> > think...
Christophe writes:
> This was the original intuition by Blank & Jeron or by Valery  
> Grancher when
> he made his first webpainting in 1998 (he refers to Picabia, Jasper  
> Johns
> etc.), or Miltos Manetas with his internet paintings...
>
> I?m very much influenced by this ironical idea of the ?retour des  
> choses? as
> we would say in french. What is the most stupid thing you can do  
> when you
> are a net.artist: the answer is: painting a website on a canvas.  
> What was
> the most stupid thing I could do, with my epiphanies: replacing the  
> computer
> with a human being.
>
> I think this provides interesting conceptual loops at the age of
> globalization:
> 0) Human beings speak
> 1) Google hacks all the speeches of mankind
> 2) I hack Google in return
> 3) From this double hack, a human being speaks (the human browser)  
> and we
> are back to 0), but we made a very big loop ;-)

Saul writes:

> a  subject that is at once both fluid/ adaptable and
> incapable of deluding itself into believing it is capable of acting

Christiane writes:


> Are the networked and performative artistic practices in which many  
> of us are involved a valuable counter-balance and at the same time  
> the foundations of today's "empire"?

GH writes:
>

> . Although the notion of a person functioning or being directed by  
> web information is amusing, I think that the emotion of surprise  
> and disjunction is more important....
> > If we follow what the philosophers say; all digital media is  
> > alienating. Both Christina and Christophe use those tools to  
> > humanize.


and Simon, finally,

> not counter-balance perhaps but ballast, then to Christiane's  
> question,
> yes. And a ballooning discussion like this might remind itself how  
> strong
> the lines of false-consciousness are (and in Nietzschean recursion  
> endless)
> tying it down to the idea of empire it tries to lift, lift out,  
> take, take
> off? (Something I believe Aliette has been very clear on.)


-cm