[-empyre-] RE: POLITICS!

[simon]

Dear empyreans,
I find it interesting that a discussion on 'wired sustainability' segues 
with such ease into a discussion on the problem and provenance of 
'ambient media.' Perhaps this has something to do with the increasing 
ubiquity of a wired environment such that we can on the one hand 
consider its ecology and on the other question this particular modality 
in terms of immanent technology, or ambient media, forms wherein the 
problem of the immanent is clearly raised. Clearly - but without 
requiring attention, although rewarding it by being aesthetically 
engaging. Are we seeing two sides of a grey ecology, that ecology to 
which Virilio attends in his bunker? It would seem the political issue 
at stake is the same as for any new art: the problem of whether there is 
a political difference to be made, with the given contents - the nearly 
zenlike contemplativeness of an homogenised ambient medium, on that 
approaching horizon of ubiquity - using the formal modes of a (largely 
projected) technological immanence - the screens we see everywhere in 
our science fiction. Can wiredness weird itself out enough to question 
the complacency it fosters? Because this complacency subsumes or maybe 
just placates sustainability.

The problem returns, via mimesis, via the residual tracing of the entire 
history of Western art, which is here brought to bear on our engagement 
with 'ambient media' in the present, (and this is the point of my 
intervention) to representation. Not to represent! To mean neither more 
- Patricia Zimmermann's call to POLITICS! - nor less - the four rules of 
Ambient Video as set out by Jim Bizzocchi! Wired sustainability suggests 
such Sophistry, to which this would be an encomium.

I agree with Patricia that horizontal mesh-making is better than 
standing up and being counted or making upright war or being outright 
terrified. (Wired connectivity in the aspect of dissent and 
micropolitical resistance - a world in the grain of sand - is the 
provocation for me to enter this discussion.) Her argument for /use/ 
holds good. Now how to make use sustainable? Or, a sustainable 
discourse? beyond the abrasive/anodyne dichotomising? Is there a clue in 
sustainable connexion, wired or wireless?

Yours,
Simon Taylor

www.squarewhiteworld.com
www.brazilcoffee.co.nz