RE: [-empyre-] what is to be done?

["Dirk Vekemans" <dv@vilt.net>]

Some of the discussion/questions seem to be h_Aârt-related, I will deal with
that towards the end.

Firstly, however:  What is to be done?

My dog Neo and I are convinced we definitely should try and save the planet.
We both are still very much attached to it, in spite of the fact that there
are fewer nice places to go walking these days. The children are all in
favor too. I can't reach my wife atm., but I'm sure she'll second that
opinion.

Furthermore, saving the planet will involve activities that will seem to
contradict taking care of ourselves and our children. We should therefore
aim our education towards such activities or at least indicate their
necessity in order to ensure the proper co-operation of a sufficient number
of active persons.

Next our exploration of non-human algorithmic potential should be brought up
to speed by further de-humanizing their procedural organization. We really
should learn to use the word non-human and reserve the 'inhuman' to the
usual atrocities committed by humans. 
While such de-humanization had been introduced in a limited scale early in
the development cycle of our IT-evolution, it is nowadays largely been
neglected by the industries responsible for our informational
infrastructures, allowing them to build on what is built (wrongly) only at
the expense of material resources we are no longer allowed to squander to
such selfish aims. 
We might need a global disaster or two to stop this machinery, but perhaps
it can be done without such harsh means. Some research should perhaps be
directed at selective deluge-techniques, there are by now, unfortunately,
sufficient data to enable simulations. We could call these
deluge-simulations Extended Windows to the Futu[mail-file truncated here]

Next, people should be stimulated to engage in creative activities that give
no immediate reward. As Time pointed out, enabling people to share pictures
and video and have them write down opinions in an analyzable format, is nice
and beneficial to the algorithmic research efforts, but it doesn't suffice.
People should be made aware that their human potential can only be realized
fully along the axis of
generation-generous-deviation-enactment-engagement-involvement. We should
enable the masses to talk about such activities by promoting a name-giving
process that auto-poetically results in a meaning-generation process. There
used to be a word for this, but I keep forgetting it. It doesn't matter
much, the word is bound to be obsolete by now. Most words are obsolete once
they are spoken. Only some religious persons claim to have knowledge of
words that are not obsolete when spoken, but they say these words won't do
you much good when trying to save a planet.

Finally, the run-by-a-company-that-is-run-by-a-couple-of-nice-guys paradigm
won't fool anybody much longer. We need to give a high priority to the
generation of some decent decision-making algo's that don't run out after
two or three cycles.

This is nearly the end.

As to the art matters, here's a provisional answer from the Board for
Speeding Up the Abolition of Art (the BSUAA is a local organization headed
by my Aunt Sizzle here in Kessel-lo, Belgium. I can't vouch for these
answers, you'll have to deal with them as Aunty answers come): 

"Art, like any other business, has a rather clear business logic. Part of
the business logic is concerned with brand-protection. There, the human
origin is still largely considered the best way of tackling the
art-identification problem, should it arise. Mostly, however, calling it Art
on the Cover should suffice.

If machines are nowadays able to produce a Pollock look-alike we can do away
with the Pollock look-alike contest. This will free our budgets towards a
strengthening of the Art-lack, our Board is currently dealing with a
proposal for a nation-wide campaign involving oranges and the Art Needs You
(tm)-slogan."

This is the end.

happy waving, 
dv @ Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee

> -----Original Message-----
> From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [mailto:empyre-
> bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of odyens@alcor.concordia.ca
> Sent: zaterdag 6 januari 2007 14:54
> To: empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: [-empyre-] what is to be done?
> 
> What is to be done?
> 
> More than ever the question of our relationship to both art and the
> aesthetic
> process must be address. In a world of shifting boundaries, of profound
> and
> fundamental changes, a world where universals such as life, death,
> consciousness and uniqueness are being challenged by technological
> reality,
> the question of art, of our relationship to it, the question of its
> purpose
> and of its objectives must be tackled.
> 
> (What is technological reality? It is the perception of the world
> through both
> human *and* non-human senses. With technological reality, we now have
> access
> to numerous strata of reality that were formerly impenetrable to us:
> those of
> genetics and neurology, of protons and photons, of relativity and
> quantum
> physics. Technological reality questions the fundamental distinctions
> between
> life and death, consciousness and non-consciousness, the organic and
> the non-
> organic that we once believed to be universal. In fact, the more we get
> access
> to different slivers of reality, the more difficult it becomes to
> clearly
> distinguish between these phenomena. On our own biological scale for
> example,
> the difference between a table and a man is clear. The man is alive
> while the
> table is not. But on an atomic scale of reality, to which we only have
> access
> through technological reality, there are no differences between one and
> the
> other).
> 
> What is to be done? What is to be understood by art today should
> probably be
> our starting point. For how should we define art in the 21st century
> when
> machines, technologies and software provide most of the actual artistic
> process, when some ?machines? (such as Ray Kurzweil?s Cybernetic Poet)
> even
> produce the entire artwork?
> 
> If art is now as specific to machine?s ontology as it is to humanity?s,
> then
> the question of what is to be done must be dealt with differently. Art
> embedded in machines and technologies is art embedded in the profound
> transformation of our world. It?s art within video games, themselves
> within
> the culture of war. It?s art spreading technological reality. It?s art
> intruding into the physical reality (where special effects become
> genetic
> manipulations). It?s art initiating the Inhuman Condition. Art embedded
> in
> machines is art slipping away from human control, art creating
> territories of
> emotions outside our realm of understanding, of sensitivity.
> 
> The question of ?what is to be done? must thus be understood as
> including the
> whole concept of art. What is to be done with a process that helped
> create our
> perception of the metaphysical, but whose operations, whose forms and
> sometimes even content are now within the control of machines? When
> most of
> what art produces today ignores humanity?s need for the transcendent,
> when
> what most of what art produces today responds to machine?s perceptions
> of the
> world?
> 
> ?What is to be done? when humanity is confronted with research clearly
> showing
> that art, as well as the aesthetic process, are nothing else but
> algorithmic
> structures, structures that can be identified, defined and reproduced
> mechanically (when we respond to Jackson Pollock?s paintings, we
> actually
> respond to fractals in his images. When we respond to a film or a
> musical
> piece, we respond to certain structures, pitch, tone, location,
> dialogue, that
> are clearly algorithmic)?
> 
> On Pollock:
> http://materialscience.uoregon.edu/taylor/art/scientificamerican.pdf
> 
> Music and Film:
> http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/061016fa_fact6
> 
> What is to be done when a simple computer program can decipher the
> algorithmic
> structure of a work of art? When a simple computer program (Kurzweil?s
> Cybernetic Poet for example) can generate an aesthetic experience? What
> is to
> be done when beauty appears to be nothing else but a harmonious
> mathematical
> structure? When the transcendence of art appears to be nothing else but
> a
> numerical pattern? What does it mean to be human when splendor is not a
> mystical experience but a mathematical configuration? When machines
> will soon
> produce beautiful and moving works of art?
> 
> What is to be done when machines and technologies force us to confront
> our
> inhumanity through the process of art?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
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