[-empyre-] noiseless world: re-post of intro

["sergio basbaum" <sbasbaum@gmail.com>]

Empyreans,

I'm posting this as more complete opening, in order to maybe clarify
for some the main proposal of the question of month. It may be useful
to better understand contents that already have been posted.

So I´m sharing the way the discussion has been presented to the guests:

Thank you

===================================================

THE WORK OF ART IN THE AGE OF A NOISELESS WORLD

It is more than 70 years ago when Walter Benjamin wrote his insightful
essay on the impact of technical reproducibility of art on the way we
perceive, receive and understand the concept of art in itself. Few
articles have had such a lasting impact on debates about the relations
among technology, art works, perception and culture as Benjamin's
masterpiece. Since then, influential writers such as Marshall McLuhan,
Paul Virilio, Vilém Flusser and Friedrich Kittler have taken as
granted the impact of technology on culture, and have examined its
consequences on perception and thus not only in the way we make
meaning of our contemporary experience but also in the way we think
and formalize knowledge.

If we assume that technologies are - even if for war purposes, as most
of the digital apparatuses have been -  developed taking certain
notions of  a "better life" as its goals, it can be suggested that
they carry with them a certain utopia, related to the knowledge matrix
and values from which they emerge: they intend to help to build such a
world. If that is acceptable, it is reasonable that we ask if there is
- and if so, what it is - the utopia embedded on digital informational
technology. The unavoidable answer, it seems, is that the cybernetic
paradigm aims a world of perfect informational flux - that is, a world
without noise. And we are faced with the puzzling paradox that, in
such a context, even a significant field of art-works and art-activism
developed as "social noise" are forced, in order to circulate through
digital networks, to formalize themselves in noiseless terms – those
demanded by digital apparatuses to work properly.

Trying to take advantage of some of Benjamin's insights, but assuming
we are now under a radically distinct social and cultural landscape,
we ask, and welcome your insights on "the work of art in the age of a
noiseless world", and the alternatives you suggest for the work of art
as a practice of perceptual guerrilla.

with my very best vibes, and looking forward a great exchanging of thougths

> From Brazil
Sérgio Basbaum
www.globalstrike.net (in process yet)