Re: [-empyre-] RE: empyre Digest, Vol 33, Issue 17

["Christian McCrea" <christian@wolvesevolve.com>]

Another perspective is to be found in Macrin Ramocki, "The Militant
Embrace of Technology":

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 It is that "taking for granted" which turns us into consumers of
culture as oppose to active
participants. Figuring out what is inside the black box (and why it was made)
is becoming the official duty of artistic communities.

Finally, to answer my own questions, we mess with electronics because we
identify it as a source of meaning for our generation, a way of
re-connecting with
our surrounding reality mostly composed of code and technology. The tools used
in this struggle will inevitably come from what we learned in college, namely
Clement Greenberg and Andy Warhol. But the phenomenon we see goes
beyond modernism. It is no longer the need to clarify the medium, or
find the best
form for its content. The concept of an avant-garde pushing the envelope toward
some abstract "New" is slowly but surely yielding to a very specific, tactical
approach of returning technological knowledge where it belongs: in human lives.
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http://ramocki.net/ramocki-diy.pdf

... and I would agree with that, strongly. Even the pursuit of the new
had to get
old. There is SO much determination of our lives happening between the zones
of capital and technology, that I find some art more vital than ever,
more humane
and vibrationary than ever, and when I do its often because there's a militant
embrace, and sometimes it hurts, of the technology thats making me
still and slient.
Thats not to say we have a technology-only future in art terms, but
there's a lot
of work to be done just in terms of undoing damage.

-Christian McCrea