Re: [-empyre-] modern/conceptul dialectic -> N state?

Database and what specifically artists do with it was not really my question... and we could tussle over our differences here much as took place more than a week ago on rhizome in a thread with Geert Dekkers, Myron Turner, Curt Cloninger, Myron Turner, Rob Myers, Eric Dymond, and perhaps most importantly Dirk Vekemans, (because he is one of the empyre respondents this month. Hi Dirk!)

So I'll wait and see what interest Bruno, Kluitenberg, Christiane Paul, Dirk and Christina might have in the question re a hypothetical N state broadly, (or whether they think it is just continuous pomo), and what they think that "N state" in the epochal (not just art historic) sense might be, even if that is a speculative sci-fi theory about the N state of global culture... I don't want to ask the guests to be canonical about it... but some speculation might be fun:-) (Warwick in a sense already gave such a speculation about the post-pomo: "go with everything that works - but GO!"... in other contexts "The Long Emergency"...)

Cheers and warm regards,
Brett

ps

Thanks G.H., with whom I have much respect and have been on many lists with... but I could not disagree with you more about artists and their relation to database... at least as far as being assemblers of materials from database and emotive representationalists toward some notion of identity maintenance through multimedia or hypertext. I'm much more interested in the bureaucrat, the database and what really happens or might be made to really happen in the era after the arrival of the bureaucrat with the database (who with wal-mart) beat us to the punch and have already found ways to have their way with us and the world again and again. (Wow, I just reread that... I may sound bitter but I am not... just interested in what we can do now, moving forward...) But again, I was not trying to stimulate that discussion here...


G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:

gh responds:

When I think of database I think of a bureaucrat filling out a form..name..place of birth.. phone number etc.. The information is stored and it supposedly represents a person but we know better. It's reducing a person to statistics. So how do we make that person come alive?
We use various devices to sample information; cameras, microphones, seismographic sensors, moisture sensors, scanners etc..
What is interesting about sampling is that we can use the measuring instruments to grab portions, store the information, and then assemble the information in any order we see fit. The database allows us to do this. It allows us to create baroque, dense, non- linear layered art work. Where does the artist sit in all of this? The artist takes the data and finds ways to assemble new representations of reality that combines hard core data and emotive, visceral, kinetic sensation. It goes beyond the Post-Modernist notion of the collapse or de-centering of the subjective point of view.

I think of this as (us) being in reality but turning off the filters that we use to organize information in our mind and memory. So I would agree with Brett that there is a new epoch or N-state. This is where the fun starts. How to define the N-state? Some of my recent audio and performance work deals with dense overlayed immersive sounds. I describe this as memory having the structure of a spiky burr. The spikes that stick out are like sound bites that lead you into the denser areas of memory and sensation.
<http://spaghetti.nujus.net/rantapod><http://spaghetti.nujus.net/ artDirt>





A couple of questions for the respondents...

I have assumed that the modern and the postmodern (and previous epochs back to the archaic) interoperate in layers in our cultural system, but are in our contemporary state now stimulated by information technology... fundamentally the speed of database.

In your view, what role does IT and database play, if any, in catalyzing the contemporary situation? Could we say that it is in some sense that a new epoch or zeitgeist, an N-state, is emerging to supersede the pomo that is based on material differences that IT and database have catalyzed? (I think I read this drift Bruno's human browser... creating novel real performances out of a distributed database application that has its own ideas about the local context... great stuff.) Or is the present situation still best characterized as the lingering postmodern?

If the latter is the case, I do think it is very interesting to heed what Henry Warwick had to say in a previous post about energy. Any thoughts on what might stimulate a break in the epochal inertia?

Assuming that it is not broken already... I tend to think that all of the accomplishments of postmodernism are best characterized as the first phase of a new epoch which might be better named; and where the first phase of course persistently misunderstands what has happened to us. Misunderstanding is natural in times of massive technological and economic change... it took modernism a long time to successfully incorporate the industrial revolution... but in any case my view is that the postmodern is at least maturing out of the euphoric/dystopic dialectic of the 80's, which culminated nicely in the Matrix. We can see now that the sign does not replace the real, but materially interacts with it in new ways... like in the human browser... but oops... I'm asking a question here... I should not be answering my own... sorry...

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre



_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.

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