[-empyre-] Laurent Sauerwein: Resolution for Digital Futures

[Timothy Murray]

Speaking of resolution: I remember a conversation 
I once had with British pop artist Richard 
Hamilton. He was all excited about the advent of 
stochastic digital printing, a technology which 
consists in introducing a certain degree of 
chance in printing images, in order to create 
accidents and imperfections, and thus disrupt the 
excessive regularity and simplification 
associated with ordinary computer output. 
Stochastic printing was the key to more 
imperfect, therefore more life-like digital 
images. Needless to say that simulated 
imperfections for the purpose of pictorial 
hyper-realism leave me cold. Promising, on the 
other hand, is imperfection if it evokes 
something which is radically non-quantifiable and 
which therefore eludes computation. There are a 
few precious things that algorithms cannot in any 
way envisage.

That day, Hamilton also spoke about resolution, 
as in numbers of pixels, noting that when he had 
evoked the subject to a group of students, they 
didn't understand at first what he was talking 
about. He said: "I think they heard revolution".

I want disruption, to the point that I have 
stopped being annoyed by the power-cuts we 
frequently have in the otherwise relatively 
well-connected tropical forest of Tamil Nadu, 
South India, where we currently spend a good part 
of the year.

I promise that I am not afraid of prolonged 
power-cuts. The last monsoon made us bring out 
the candles and we rediscovered the pleasure of 
those extraordinary, light-weight, wireless 
interactive devices called books. Immersed as I 
have been in digital technology for close to 25 
years, I never imagined I could live, work and 
dream without pixels, bits and bytes. Survival 
outside the womb of intangible global networks 
seemed impossible. Not so. Well, at least for a 
few days of monsoon.

I know it's considered 'passé', if not outright 
totalitarian, but I have kept all along a 
fondness for utopia. Utopia, capital U, capital 
YOU. It's not about hardware, it's about people. 
Convinced that the current crisis is not 
circumstantial, my sympathy goes to those who use 
digital networking (and other means) for social 
transformation, toward a more peaceful, 
sustainable and just world.

I have a special fondness for utopias that are 
within reach, at arms length, at the tip of the 
finger. It's the next step that counts.

Meanwhile, I need room to think and move. That's 
why we have moved for several months to South 
India. There, I pledge to do away with all the 
instant ruins of digital technology that encumber 
my daily life. I want most of the hardware and 
annoying paraphernalia to evaporate, and I 
promise that I won't complain about power-cuts. 
For the next one, I'll even light a candle.

And so I got myself an iPhone.

== == ==


Bio: Laurent Sauerwein (India/France) is an 
artist 
(<http://www.youcantouch.com>http://www.youcantouch.com), 
designer, former senior reporter on French public 
television. For the American University of Paris, 
he just taught a graduate course on sustainable 
development in Auroville, Tamil Nadu, South India 
(<http://globalhub.eu>http://globalhub.eu). He is 
also creating a non-profit research center and 
production studio devoted to e-learning on cell 
phones and mobile video. Named Pondywood, the NGO 
will be based near Pondicherry, India.
-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University