Re: Forward from Christiane Paul RE: [-empyre-] modern/conceptu[a!]l dialectic -> N state?

[Brett Stalbaum <stalbaum@ucsd.edu>]

Here is the Paper by Warren Sack that Christiane refers too...
http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/socialComputingLab/Publications/wsack-infoaesthetics-illustrated.doc

Christina McPhee wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
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--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
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