Forward from Christiane Paul RE: [-empyre-] modern/conceptul dialectic -> N state?

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

From: <Christiane_Paul@whitney.org>
Date: March 8, 2006 8:02:11 AM PST
To: <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] modern/conceptul dialectic -> N state?


Unfortunately, I don't have the time to get deeply into this but here  
are at least some sketchy thoughts...

Brett wrote:
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...

I would agree, that's what I tried ton suggest in a previous post...

Brett wrote:
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?


While I do believe that networked technologies / IT / database are  
very important catalysts in  shaping an n-state, their underlying  
principles have multiple reference points to past discussions.

Warren Sack has written a very interesting article on the aesthetics  
of information visualization in which he references Benjamin Buchloh  
who described this teleology of conceptual art as an "aesthetic of  
administration." Sack suggests that we can understand contemporary  
database-based (databased?) work in a similar way because  
metaphorically and literally, computers are an outgrowth of bureaucracy:

The "files," "directories," "folders," and "volumes" of contemporary  
operating systems; the "tables" and "entries" of database systems;  
the "rows" and "columns" and accounting procedures of spreadsheets;  
the common algorithms of "sorting," "queuing," and "categorization"  
all are reminders of the bureaucratic lineage of the computer and  
computer science, in general.
[Sack]

So one could argue that database and related issues (bureaucracy /  
administration) were already very much part of the discussion  
surrounding conceptual art. But Sack pushes this into a different  
realm: the aesthetics of governance, where the “body” is a “body  
politic,” a collective, or groups of people articulated together  
through diverse sets of social and technical means.

I think this particular concept of governance and body politic is  
essential to the age of IT and networked database. It goes beyond the  
aesthetics of administration in the databases of conceptual art and  
has taken new form in the n-state.