[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 12
Kriss Ravetto
K.Ravetto at ed.ac.uk
Fri Jul 16 23:43:33 EST 2010
Hi all, I am feel a bit jet-lagged here, or at least hovering over
some undefined time zone. Things are getting thicker and rhizomatic,
and I hope I am responding to everyone who is writing here. If not I
am sorry, for there are so many directions to take.
Simon says (sorry Simon):
"I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
agency is located."
I have no problems with your use of agency as both an encounter and
relation, autopoetic and emergent (Martin Buber, Man with Man, this
kind of stuff???). Ontology only makes me a little nervous (it is
just the part of the a priori that I find uncomfortable, I guess for
the same reason that Ingold does not like objects). I am, though, not
sure how agency, if it is to be ontological, cannot be located. Even
the in-between has 2 points of reference, no? Why are you down
playing the spatial dimensions of being?
In Heidegger's terms things are grounded, but grounding is subject to
ungrounding. Things, if phenomena, take place, even virtual ones (this
is Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's argument). This gets us into sticky
territory we can have virtual agents without actually existing having
their own ontology. Maybe this is part of the challenge of distributed
networks and the communities that emerge from them?
James says:
"I think you put your finger on the problem with the term community
here - and indeed, emphasising communication revitalises, or rather
relocates our attention from trying to find an entity with boundaries
etc., to a (for me) more productive focus on the emergent form of
social worlds as ongoing."
Yes, I think that the focus on communication as content oriented ends
up with the problem of identity politics. I assume you do not mean
that "the striving to be human" is the search for identification
(Freud and Oedipus), but I am not sure what this striving is for. Can
we read this striving as life affirming (something someone mentioned
before). I see that you are arguing that this striving does not have
to be a single concept or image of creation; it can constantly change
the nature of the human so that the human can include other things.
But can it be indifferent as Simon points out with his gravitational
pull toward dark matter?
Martin also seems to agree with you about the human striving, and its
connection to agency, yet Martin, your notion of agency seems to
involve the will, it is not as autopoetic as James suggests???
James says: "What is being gathered? what are the constraints on those
gatherings? and what is created through them - ie, what changes
because of them?"
Wouldn't each gathering be specific? And if we were to accept Simon?s
definition of process/agency language would fail us, since it would
require that we name, situate or objectify something that is always
already something else, no? It makes our work more difficult for sure.
Eugenio,
Thanks for the reference to Cohen. The Cohen you refer to is the
structuralist anthropologist who reads community as "communities of
meaning" that is individually interpreted, yes? I know I have a book
of his somewhere, I will try to dig it up.
What do you think of Elias's argument that community is virtual, a
virtual past ? a virtual nostalgia if you will? If we are talking
nostalgia and individual interpretation then doesn?t this lead us to
what Baudrillard finds obscene about subjectivity ? its complete
inability to communicate? This is also the paradox of what Julian
points being that structures and languages, rituals in-form subjects,
so interpretation here does have limits, and it cannot easily describe
change, wasn?t this also a problem for Bergson (between an informed
embodied perception and emergence?)
Martin,
Your play with words is quite poetic, an example of gathering
together ("agency involves ourselves" gray matter or dark matter) or
falling apart (the case of wankers, which is just an more exclusive
way of saying "agency involves ourselves")?
Sean,
I agree with you on the mediation, but Deleuze (In Societies of
Control and in Captialism and Schizo) saw mediation as a form of
control. The dividual seems a product of calculation, statistics,
identification (not as a subject but as a consumer), while dark matter
here seems to be more of an enigma, can you explain the analogy?
Quoting empyre-request at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au:
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Simon Biggs)
> 2. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (James Leach)
> 3. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Simon Biggs)
> 4. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Eugenio Tisselli)
> 5. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Julian Oliver)
> 6. Re: Creativity as a social ontology (Julian Oliver)
> 7. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Simon Biggs)
> 8. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Sean Cubitt)
> 9. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (j.martin.pedersen)
> 10. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Simon Biggs)
> 11. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (Simon Biggs)
> 12. Re: empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
> create / the social beyond the mechanisim? (christopher sullivan)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:33:12 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <C8648658.28CD7%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
> everything together. The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
> Skype: simonbiggsuk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
> http://www.elmcip.net/
> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>
>
>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:43:44 +0100
>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>
>> I am not so sure that experience
>> is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new
>> left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"
>> as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The
>> difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to
>> "object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community
>> (dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the
>> limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of
>> the state).
>>
>> How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for
>> a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his
>> critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads
>> back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human.
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:02:33 +0100
> From: James Leach <james.leach at abdn.ac.uk>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <05ED3078-7D5C-4658-B4E7-21F69CDAE5EA at abdn.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>
> Kriss - thanks for these stimulating thoughts.
>
> I think you put your finger on the problem with the term community
> here - and indeed, emphasising communication revitalises, or rather
> relocates our attention from trying to find an entity with
> boundaries etc., to a (for me) more productive focus on the emergent
> form of social worlds as ongoing.
> And that might indeed take us to a notion of gathering. Describing
> the limits of relations, or limits of meaning in these processes of
> gathering, whether they be through new or old mediums of
> communication, is to outline the lineaments of particular social
> forms, and thus does make possible the idea of seeing a 'creation'
> as an outcome of human endeavours, but not driven by single
> authorship or indeed, will, in any straightforward manner. Didn't
> Heidegger emphasise the limits of the relational world when he came
> to talk about aesthetics: that what art does is reveal the limits,
> and thus show us the counter-invented, the shadow creations of human
> social and cultural strivings? Maybe that is what you are
> suggesting we think about when you talk of how and where we place
> the human in this discussion?
> I used the term (human) as a specific and phenomenologically
> inflected holding term: that in the small scale societies I was
> referring to, people strive to make the 'human' appear. Eduardo
> Vivieros de Castro recently put this idea in the following way:
> 'incest is often associated, in Amazonian languages and cosmologies,
> with processes of metamorphosis ? that is, the transformation of
> the human body into the body of an animal. Kinship, in Amazonia, is
> a process of constructing a proper human body out of the primal
> analogic flow of soul-matter in which humans and animals interchange
> their bodily forms unceasingly. Incest inverts this process (Coelho
> de Souza 2002), ?unrelating? us to other humans and taking us back
> to where we came from ? the pre-cosmological chaos described by
> myth. But this, in the appropriate context, is exactly what magic
> and ritual are supposed to do' (2009).
> I guess my point was/is that although this sounds terribly exotic,
> it is a process which is more widely applicable as a principle: that
> being 'human' is something people attend to and inevitably strive
> for. The place of creativity and the creation of human worlds then
> are closely articulated.
> There was never any intention in my mind to define a human against
> objects or technologies, but rather point out that what is and isnt
> counted as human in particular worlds shapes the way people make
> themselves appear to themselves: and where creativity lies is an
> element in this wider complex.
> The limits you talk about, generated in technical networks, are
> certainly part of the wider place that things have in processes of
> making the human appear our particular society or social processes:
> so again to draw Heidegger's language into this, there is a
> metaphysic built into any technology, a metaphysic that structures
> what is and isnt possible. That metaphysic is hidden, necessarily
> obviated as a meaningful percept, in the very use of that technology
> for its purpose. Complex affinal marriage systems make possible a
> very different world to capitalist, individualist, communication
> technologies. Does it make sense to think of them as 'technologies'
> or 'mediums' through which people exercise an agency in creating
> themselves and others? A limited agency, limited not just by the
> political and social exclusions that can be built around and into
> the systems, but also by the simple fact that doing one thing is not
> doing another, and the doing comes to take on a momentum (it is n
> aturalised, becomes autopoetic etc.)
> Perhaps then we should be looking to examine not what is made
> possible by digital networks ('new creativity'), but at their
> limits? The way they partake of and re-present the principles that
> have constituted the place of 'creativity' and 'art'?
>
> I think I am rather agreeing with the direction of enquiry that you
> suggest in your post, Kriss.
>
> But Simon, you also are keen to explore the emergent possibility, to
> actually look at what is made visible in emerging digital networked
> forms that is not visible in previous ways of working?
>
> What is being gathered? what are the constraints on those
> gatherings? and what is created through them - ie, what changes
> because of them?
>
>
> On 14 Jul 2010, at 21:43, Kriss Ravetto wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Thanks for all the comments. I wanted to ask a couple questions to
>> Simon, James, and Eugenio (if you are still there) about agency
>> (Simon's term) and James's question regarding creativity that defines
>> us as human (Eugenio's term). Simon, I am not so sure that experience
>> is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new
>> left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"
>> as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The
>> difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to
>> "object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community
>> (dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the
>> limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of
>> the state).
>>
>> How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for
>> a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his
>> critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads
>> back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human. I like Andy Pickering's
>> book:The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science, where he
>> questions the production of scientific knowledge. Pickering argues
>> that scientific knowledge comes out of scientific culture, a
>> performative image of science (but there is no nothing). "Whereas one
>> could once get away with thinking of scientific culture as simply a
>> field of knowledge, in what follows I take "culture" in a broad sense,
>> to denote the "made things" of science, in - which I include skills
>> and social relations, machines and instruments, as well as scientific
>> facts and theories. And then I can state that my abiding concern is
>> with scientific practice, understood as the work of cultural
>> extension. My problematic thus includes the traditional one of
>> understanding how new knowledge is produced in science, but goes
>> beyond it in its interest in the transformation of the material and
>> social dimen-sions to science, too."
>>
>> Ingold, Latour, Heidegger, are in the business of producing knowledge,
>> and come with their own cultures (anthropology, philosophy and
>> sociology of science, philosophy), no? All of them, to their credit,
>> engage with other knowledge cultures. Both Ingold and Latour use the
>> term gathering together (Heidegger), in similar ways. Maybe we can
>> think about this term and creativity? Why does this not work with
>> community? Yes, we do have to think about the limits of technology,
>> mediation, and the geo-politics, or brute capitalism behind many of
>> these technologies. How does gathering together help us get beyond this?
>>
>> If we, as James pointed out, are trying to think how new technologies
>> (particularly the speed of transmission of data) change or can create
>> new social relations, then where do we place the human? The human is
>> not really that old of a concept and it has a lot of problems itself.
>>
>> When we talk about networked communities and their limits some of
>> these limits (I assume are not human), does that give them agency in
>> the same way. That is, how can we claim to isolate creativity, or
>> community for that matter by placing exclusions / anxieties, etc.
>> When we talk about inclusion or anxiety, what is the issue, are these
>> always possibilities? Are they always the premise? Most of the
>> theories of community (recent ones, do attempt to think beyond
>> exclusions, starting with Agamben's Coming Community, and various
>> others on the Italian left). Yet these theories are also moving away
>> from state-based (ethnic and nationalist) understandings of community
>> as temporary ? problem oriented rather than identity oriented.
>>
>> I look forward to your responses!
>>
>>
>>
>> Quoting empyre-request at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au:
>>
>>> Send empyre mailing list submissions to
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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>>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>>> than "Re: Contents of empyre digest..."
>>>
>>>
>>> Today's Topics:
>>>
>>> 1. Re: Hello from Hell (Simon Biggs)
>>> 2. Re: Hello from Hell (Simon Biggs)
>>> 3. Re: Hello from Hell (Eugenio Tisselli)
>>> 4. Re: Creativity as a social ontology (James Leach)
>>>
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:56:46 +0100
>>> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>>> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
>>> <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>> Message-ID: <C861E8DE.28BDC%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>>>
>>> Living in Scotland I have evidence for the opposite take on creativity and
>>> temperature. Even in the Summer it is can be so cold you do not want to get
>>> out of a warm bed. Being originally from South Australia, a hot place at
>>> times, I remember the blistering heat and its draining effects on energy.
>>> However, I also fondly remember long nights in the studio working
>>> during the
>>> cooler (eg: less than 40c) hours. I am not sure which is the more
>>> deleterious to creativity.
>>>
>>> But, putting the weather to one side...and addressing each of
>>> Kriss's knotty
>>> and knotted points.
>>>
>>> 1. I hope we are not restricting ourselves to the visual. My hope was that
>>> this theme would allow us to discuss creativity in general, not visual (or
>>> any other) art in particular.
>>>
>>> 2. I agree that experience is creative and therefore a form of agency. I
>>> would also argue that it is not something restricted to particular forms of
>>> experience (eg: interpretation) nor to certain kinds of agent (eg:
>>> conscious). I would like to suggest that creativity is about relationships,
>>> interactions rather than actions. You mention Deleuze on this point, but we
>>> could also look to Tim Ingold's thinking concerning the nature of
>>> relations,
>>> interaction and agency. To some extent he counters but also augments
>>> Latour's approach, describing the eliciting of creativity as less a quality
>>> of interactions than "lines along which things continually come into being.
>>> Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this literally and
>>> precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of interwoven lines
>>> of growth and movement" (see ref), possibly evoking Deleuze's use of the
>>> metaphor of the rhizome. To me this (poetically) evokes Darwin's "tangled
>>> bank", itself a metaphor for creativity and agency beyond the human and
>>> certainly beyond the narrow conceptions of an exclusive creative arts
>>> discourse.
>>>
>>> 3. From this position it is impossible to disagree with Foucault's take on
>>> art being about sign value and property. One could regard art as the
>>> utilisation and capitalisation of creativity (the Situationist position and
>>> one that Baudrillard echoed). This dynamic can also be seen to affect other
>>> domains of creativity, such as scientific inquiry or invention (tinkering,
>>> relating to your reference to tacit knowledge). Governments and
>>> corporations
>>> (and many of us in our daily lives) refer to this as innovation, seeking to
>>> neuter creativity as agency and deploy what is left as art. We hope to
>>> render the potential of our interactions (creativity) safe. Our
>>> institutions
>>> are there to ensure this happens. The question then is how we remove these
>>> safety barriers and, perhaps more probematically, how we could live in such
>>> an unsafe world? Perhaps we really do need to be protected?
>>>
>>> 4. I am not sure how to approach the idea of thinking images in this
>>> context. Images can be thinking, but can they think? I would be tempted to
>>> agree. It depends on what you mean by thinking (and meaning). Can images
>>> have agency? Yes. Can images make meaning in their relations, irrespective
>>> of human intent? Yes. However, agency is about interactions. Can the
>>> interaction between images, without interpretation, be meaningful? I'm not
>>> sure. If there is no reception in this chain of events then is
>>> there meaning
>>> (what is meaning)? Perhaps. But I like the idea and often use it in my own
>>> (auto-generative) work (writing that writes itself and is not
>>> intended to be
>>> read by people but by other instances of automatic writing).
>>>
>>> 5. Nothing ever only takes place in the brain and lots of our interactions
>>> do not involve the brain at all. As for the mind, does that take place in
>>> the brain? I would treat the relationship of the mind to the brain
>>> similarly.
>>>
>>> 6. Innovation (utilitarian creativity) possibly does require privacy. I am
>>> not so sure about creativity per se.
>>>
>>> 7. ...and yes, intimacy and privacy are not the same thing.
>>>
>>> ref: Ingold, T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative entanglements in a
>>> world of materials, presented at the Material Worlds symposium, Brown
>>> University, http://proteus.brown.edu/cogutmaterialworlds/4080
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> Simon
>>>
>>>
>>> Simon Biggs
>>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
>>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>>
>>> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>>>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:13:49 +0100
>>>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>> Subject: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology community,
>>>>
>>>> I have been baking here on the East Coast of the US with the record
>>>> heat wave, and I agree with the point about creativity and temperature
>>>> (I do not feel very creative). Apologies if I am not coherent, there
>>>> is still some morning breeze here.
>>>>
>>>> Given that I come to the question of creativity and social networking
>>>> through critical theory ? I teach film and media theory at the
>>>> University of Edinburgh. I am aware I am going to change the tone a
>>>> bit. I would like to start by rethinking a few points (particularly
>>>> terms) that came up in last week?s discussion, and ask if James and
>>>> Simon had some thoughts about these issues:
>>>>
>>>> 1) ?a tendency to focus only on the visual.? Hasn?t this focus on
>>>> the visual changed with immersive and more interactive work that
>>>> attempts to be more affective (trigger kinesthetic as well as
>>>> emotional responses)?
>>>>
>>>> 2) ?complex nature of our experience? ? How do we understand
>>>> experience? Isn?t it also creative? Or are we back to oppositions
>>>> about active / passive, the singular and the general. Experience
>>>> seems to fall into the category of what Deleuze called the problematic
>>>> since it cannot be singular (yet we perceive it as such), since it
>>>> requires action, interaction, mediation, and some creative
>>>> interpretation. When we talk about ?our experience? are we talking
>>>> about something that is also a creative network ? that is not owned by
>>>> anyone?
>>>>
>>>> 3) artist genius as Foucault argued is now a question of signature
>>>> which means copyright and legality. The social science network seems
>>>> to operate on different principles and I would argue that it is a
>>>> platform designed to produce social creative ontology.
>>>>
>>>> 4) I am curious about what people mean by the ?ideology of the
>>>> visual.? If images think then they must not think in terms of
>>>> language, but in terms of images, no? Therefore, if we are talking
>>>> ideology, aren?t we talking the creation of visual concepts. The
>>>> problem here is can a single image think, or do we need a chain of
>>>> images to think (like the Lacanian chain of signifiers, i.e. the
>>>> cinematic)? This has been debated since the 1960s (Metz, Pasolini,
>>>> Dayan, Mulvey, etc.)
>>>>
>>>> 5) When we talk about sense, we talk about it as tacit knowledge.
>>>> Where does sense take place: take vision for instance, do we claim it
>>>> only takes place in the brain? Or are there other interfaces? Do they
>>>> make sense?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 6) When we talk about Privacy or secrecy / trade secrets (i.e., no
>>>> open lab) then yes, innovation needs privacy in its inception. (This
>>>> is the subject of my husband's Mario Biagioli?s, current work, "From
>>>> Ciphers to Confidentiality" in States of Secrecy).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 7) Intimacy leads us in a completely different direction. Privacy is
>>>> the problematic term here: when we refer to secrecy (in terms of
>>>> innovation, we are talking trade secrets, and nothing intimate), but
>>>> rights to privacy do touch on this, yet again, privacy seems to me,
>>>> not to be intimate. Innovation or creative communities need not be
>>>> intimate, unless we are redefining what this term means. Also, I am
>>>> not sure that intimacy is related to place.
>>>>
>>>> But this leads to the question of platforms as space. How does a site
>>>> relate to space? Yes, we can reveal intimate secrets on such sites,
>>>> but there is something spatially distinct an estrangement, and at the
>>>> same time the spectacular (as Victor Burgin argues).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>>>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
>>> number SC009201
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 2
>>> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 09:56:46 +0100
>>> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>>> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
>>> <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>> Message-ID: <C861E8DE.28BDC%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>>>
>>> Living in Scotland I have evidence for the opposite take on creativity and
>>> temperature. Even in the Summer it is can be so cold you do not want to get
>>> out of a warm bed. Being originally from South Australia, a hot place at
>>> times, I remember the blistering heat and its draining effects on energy.
>>> However, I also fondly remember long nights in the studio working
>>> during the
>>> cooler (eg: less than 40c) hours. I am not sure which is the more
>>> deleterious to creativity.
>>>
>>> But, putting the weather to one side...and addressing each of
>>> Kriss's knotty
>>> and knotted points.
>>>
>>> 1. I hope we are not restricting ourselves to the visual. My hope was that
>>> this theme would allow us to discuss creativity in general, not visual (or
>>> any other) art in particular.
>>>
>>> 2. I agree that experience is creative and therefore a form of agency. I
>>> would also argue that it is not something restricted to particular forms of
>>> experience (eg: interpretation) nor to certain kinds of agent (eg:
>>> conscious). I would like to suggest that creativity is about relationships,
>>> interactions rather than actions. You mention Deleuze on this point, but we
>>> could also look to Tim Ingold's thinking concerning the nature of
>>> relations,
>>> interaction and agency. To some extent he counters but also augments
>>> Latour's approach, describing the eliciting of creativity as less a quality
>>> of interactions than "lines along which things continually come into being.
>>> Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this literally and
>>> precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of interwoven lines
>>> of growth and movement" (see ref), possibly evoking Deleuze's use of the
>>> metaphor of the rhizome. To me this (poetically) evokes Darwin's "tangled
>>> bank", itself a metaphor for creativity and agency beyond the human and
>>> certainly beyond the narrow conceptions of an exclusive creative arts
>>> discourse.
>>>
>>> 3. From this position it is impossible to disagree with Foucault's take on
>>> art being about sign value and property. One could regard art as the
>>> utilisation and capitalisation of creativity (the Situationist position and
>>> one that Baudrillard echoed). This dynamic can also be seen to affect other
>>> domains of creativity, such as scientific inquiry or invention (tinkering,
>>> relating to your reference to tacit knowledge). Governments and
>>> corporations
>>> (and many of us in our daily lives) refer to this as innovation, seeking to
>>> neuter creativity as agency and deploy what is left as art. We hope to
>>> render the potential of our interactions (creativity) safe. Our
>>> institutions
>>> are there to ensure this happens. The question then is how we remove these
>>> safety barriers and, perhaps more probematically, how we could live in such
>>> an unsafe world? Perhaps we really do need to be protected?
>>>
>>> 4. I am not sure how to approach the idea of thinking images in this
>>> context. Images can be thinking, but can they think? I would be tempted to
>>> agree. It depends on what you mean by thinking (and meaning). Can images
>>> have agency? Yes. Can images make meaning in their relations, irrespective
>>> of human intent? Yes. However, agency is about interactions. Can the
>>> interaction between images, without interpretation, be meaningful? I'm not
>>> sure. If there is no reception in this chain of events then is
>>> there meaning
>>> (what is meaning)? Perhaps. But I like the idea and often use it in my own
>>> (auto-generative) work (writing that writes itself and is not
>>> intended to be
>>> read by people but by other instances of automatic writing).
>>>
>>> 5. Nothing ever only takes place in the brain and lots of our interactions
>>> do not involve the brain at all. As for the mind, does that take place in
>>> the brain? I would treat the relationship of the mind to the brain
>>> similarly.
>>>
>>> 6. Innovation (utilitarian creativity) possibly does require privacy. I am
>>> not so sure about creativity per se.
>>>
>>> 7. ...and yes, intimacy and privacy are not the same thing.
>>>
>>> ref: Ingold, T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative entanglements in a
>>> world of materials, presented at the Material Worlds symposium, Brown
>>> University, http://proteus.brown.edu/cogutmaterialworlds/4080
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> Simon
>>>
>>>
>>> Simon Biggs
>>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
>>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>>
>>> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>>>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:13:49 +0100
>>>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>> Subject: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology community,
>>>>
>>>> I have been baking here on the East Coast of the US with the record
>>>> heat wave, and I agree with the point about creativity and temperature
>>>> (I do not feel very creative). Apologies if I am not coherent, there
>>>> is still some morning breeze here.
>>>>
>>>> Given that I come to the question of creativity and social networking
>>>> through critical theory ? I teach film and media theory at the
>>>> University of Edinburgh. I am aware I am going to change the tone a
>>>> bit. I would like to start by rethinking a few points (particularly
>>>> terms) that came up in last week?s discussion, and ask if James and
>>>> Simon had some thoughts about these issues:
>>>>
>>>> 1) ?a tendency to focus only on the visual.? Hasn?t this focus on
>>>> the visual changed with immersive and more interactive work that
>>>> attempts to be more affective (trigger kinesthetic as well as
>>>> emotional responses)?
>>>>
>>>> 2) ?complex nature of our experience? ? How do we understand
>>>> experience? Isn?t it also creative? Or are we back to oppositions
>>>> about active / passive, the singular and the general. Experience
>>>> seems to fall into the category of what Deleuze called the problematic
>>>> since it cannot be singular (yet we perceive it as such), since it
>>>> requires action, interaction, mediation, and some creative
>>>> interpretation. When we talk about ?our experience? are we talking
>>>> about something that is also a creative network ? that is not owned by
>>>> anyone?
>>>>
>>>> 3) artist genius as Foucault argued is now a question of signature
>>>> which means copyright and legality. The social science network seems
>>>> to operate on different principles and I would argue that it is a
>>>> platform designed to produce social creative ontology.
>>>>
>>>> 4) I am curious about what people mean by the ?ideology of the
>>>> visual.? If images think then they must not think in terms of
>>>> language, but in terms of images, no? Therefore, if we are talking
>>>> ideology, aren?t we talking the creation of visual concepts. The
>>>> problem here is can a single image think, or do we need a chain of
>>>> images to think (like the Lacanian chain of signifiers, i.e. the
>>>> cinematic)? This has been debated since the 1960s (Metz, Pasolini,
>>>> Dayan, Mulvey, etc.)
>>>>
>>>> 5) When we talk about sense, we talk about it as tacit knowledge.
>>>> Where does sense take place: take vision for instance, do we claim it
>>>> only takes place in the brain? Or are there other interfaces? Do they
>>>> make sense?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 6) When we talk about Privacy or secrecy / trade secrets (i.e., no
>>>> open lab) then yes, innovation needs privacy in its inception. (This
>>>> is the subject of my husband's Mario Biagioli?s, current work, "From
>>>> Ciphers to Confidentiality" in States of Secrecy).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 7) Intimacy leads us in a completely different direction. Privacy is
>>>> the problematic term here: when we refer to secrecy (in terms of
>>>> innovation, we are talking trade secrets, and nothing intimate), but
>>>> rights to privacy do touch on this, yet again, privacy seems to me,
>>>> not to be intimate. Innovation or creative communities need not be
>>>> intimate, unless we are redefining what this term means. Also, I am
>>>> not sure that intimacy is related to place.
>>>>
>>>> But this leads to the question of platforms as space. How does a site
>>>> relate to space? Yes, we can reveal intimate secrets on such sites,
>>>> but there is something spatially distinct an estrangement, and at the
>>>> same time the spectacular (as Victor Burgin argues).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>>>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
>>> number SC009201
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 3
>>> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:59:26 -0700 (PDT)
>>> From: Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23 at yahoo.com>
>>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>> Message-ID: <808860.30536.qm at web50206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> I am sorry for being silent during this weekend, but I was also
>>> experiencing extreme temperatures in a small town called Morille
>>> near Salamanca, Spain, inhabited by a mere 200 people. No Internet,
>>> no phones, but I returned totally energized after a 3-day art &
>>> poetry festival done together with the local community. It may be
>>> interesting for you to know that there is an art cemetery there, and
>>> every once in a while artists (well-known or otherwise) go there to
>>> bury one of their pieces, in what sometimes becomes a very intense
>>> ritual. Everybody in Morille participates in these burials, and they
>>> are very proud of having this "Museum-mausoleum" in their town.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I want to thank you all, especially Simon and Helen, for
>>> such an interesting week of discussion. I don't want to put down any
>>> "concluding remarks", since the discussion continues, so I'll be
>>> popping up from time to time. But, to me, Julian's contribution
>>> reflects the tension happening in digital networks in a great way:
>>>
>>> "Exlusion has an awful name, largely due to xenophobic, classist projects
>>> throughout history, but we're all already practicing exclusion in
>>> the interests of our cherished communities every day. In
>>> consideration of this topic, one could say any social network is the
>>> industrialisation of social exclusion (network anxiety) - "Am I
>>> your friend or not"?"
>>>
>>> Yes, any community has to constantly define and protect its borders,
>>> if it wants to retain its existence as such. But how permeable /
>>> flexible can the borders be? Do permeability / felxibility have any
>>> relation to the community's collective creativity? These things,
>>> together with the new ones I'll read here, will be running around in
>>> my mind.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Eugenio.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --- El mar, 7/13/10, Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> escribi?:
>>>
>>>> De: Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
>>>> Asunto: Re: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>>> A: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
>>>> empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> Fecha: martes, 13 de julio de 2010, 12:56 pm
>>>> Living in Scotland I have evidence
>>>> for the opposite take on creativity and
>>>> temperature. Even in the Summer it is can be so cold you do
>>>> not want to get
>>>> out of a warm bed. Being originally from South Australia, a
>>>> hot place at
>>>> times, I remember the blistering heat and its draining
>>>> effects on energy.
>>>> However, I also fondly remember long nights in the studio
>>>> working during the
>>>> cooler (eg: less than 40c) hours. I am not sure which is
>>>> the more
>>>> deleterious to creativity.
>>>>
>>>> But, putting the weather to one side...and addressing each
>>>> of Kriss's knotty
>>>> and knotted points.
>>>>
>>>> 1. I hope we are not restricting ourselves to the visual.
>>>> My hope was that
>>>> this theme would allow us to discuss creativity in general,
>>>> not visual (or
>>>> any other) art in particular.
>>>>
>>>> 2. I agree that experience is creative and therefore a form
>>>> of agency. I
>>>> would also argue that it is not something restricted to
>>>> particular forms of
>>>> experience (eg: interpretation) nor to certain kinds of
>>>> agent (eg:
>>>> conscious). I would like to suggest that creativity is
>>>> about relationships,
>>>> interactions rather than actions. You mention Deleuze on
>>>> this point, but we
>>>> could also look to Tim Ingold's thinking concerning the
>>>> nature of relations,
>>>> interaction and agency. To some extent he counters but also
>>>> augments
>>>> Latour's approach, describing the eliciting of creativity
>>>> as less a quality
>>>> of interactions than "lines along which things continually
>>>> come into being.
>>>> Thus when I speak of the entanglement of things I mean this
>>>> literally and
>>>> precisely: not a network of connections but a meshwork of
>>>> interwoven lines
>>>> of growth and movement" (see ref), possibly evoking
>>>> Deleuze's use of the
>>>> metaphor of the rhizome. To me this (poetically) evokes
>>>> Darwin's "tangled
>>>> bank", itself a metaphor for creativity and agency beyond
>>>> the human and
>>>> certainly beyond the narrow conceptions of an exclusive
>>>> creative arts
>>>> discourse.
>>>>
>>>> 3. From this position it is impossible to disagree with
>>>> Foucault's take on
>>>> art being about sign value and property. One could regard
>>>> art as the
>>>> utilisation and capitalisation of creativity (the
>>>> Situationist position and
>>>> one that Baudrillard echoed). This dynamic can also be seen
>>>> to affect other
>>>> domains of creativity, such as scientific inquiry or
>>>> invention (tinkering,
>>>> relating to your reference to tacit knowledge). Governments
>>>> and corporations
>>>> (and many of us in our daily lives) refer to this as
>>>> innovation, seeking to
>>>> neuter creativity as agency and deploy what is left as art.
>>>> We hope to
>>>> render the potential of our interactions (creativity) safe.
>>>> Our institutions
>>>> are there to ensure this happens. The question then is how
>>>> we remove these
>>>> safety barriers and, perhaps more probematically, how we
>>>> could live in such
>>>> an unsafe world? Perhaps we really do need to be
>>>> protected?
>>>>
>>>> 4. I am not sure how to approach the idea of thinking
>>>> images in this
>>>> context. Images can be thinking, but can they think? I
>>>> would be tempted to
>>>> agree. It depends on what you mean by thinking (and
>>>> meaning). Can images
>>>> have agency? Yes. Can images make meaning in their
>>>> relations, irrespective
>>>> of human intent? Yes. However, agency is about
>>>> interactions. Can the
>>>> interaction between images, without interpretation, be
>>>> meaningful? I'm not
>>>> sure. If there is no reception in this chain of events then
>>>> is there meaning
>>>> (what is meaning)? Perhaps. But I like the idea and often
>>>> use it in my own
>>>> (auto-generative) work (writing that writes itself and is
>>>> not intended to be
>>>> read by people but by other instances of automatic
>>>> writing).
>>>>
>>>> 5. Nothing ever only takes place in the brain and lots of
>>>> our interactions
>>>> do not involve the brain at all. As for the mind, does that
>>>> take place in
>>>> the brain? I would treat the relationship of the mind to
>>>> the brain
>>>> similarly.
>>>>
>>>> 6. Innovation (utilitarian creativity) possibly does
>>>> require privacy. I am
>>>> not so sure about creativity per se.
>>>>
>>>> 7. ...and yes, intimacy and privacy are not the same
>>>> thing.
>>>>
>>>> ref: Ingold, T (2008) Bringing things to life: Creative
>>>> entanglements in a
>>>> world of materials, presented at the Material Worlds
>>>> symposium, Brown
>>>> University, http://proteus.brown.edu/cogutmaterialworlds/4080
>>>>
>>>> Best
>>>>
>>>> Simon
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Simon Biggs
>>>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
>>>> simon at littlepig.org.uk
>>>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>>>
>>>> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>>>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative
>>>> Environments
>>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>>>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and
>>>> Innovation in Practice
>>>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>>>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>>>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>>>>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>>> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:13:49 +0100
>>>>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>>> Subject: [-empyre-] Hello from Hell
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
>>>> community,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have been baking here on the East Coast of the US
>>>> with the record
>>>>> heat wave, and I agree with the point about creativity
>>>> and temperature
>>>>> (I do not feel very creative). Apologies if I am
>>>> not coherent, there
>>>>> is still some morning breeze here.
>>>>>
>>>>> Given that I come to the question of creativity and
>>>> social networking
>>>>> through critical theory ? I teach film and media
>>>> theory at the
>>>>> University of Edinburgh. I am aware I am going
>>>> to change the tone a
>>>>> bit. I would like to start by rethinking a few
>>>> points (particularly
>>>>> terms) that came up in last week?s discussion,
>>>> and ask if James and
>>>>> Simon had some thoughts about these issues:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) ?a tendency to focus only on the visual.?
>>>> Hasn?t this focus on
>>>>> the visual changed with immersive and more interactive
>>>> work that
>>>>> attempts to be more affective (trigger kinesthetic as
>>>> well as
>>>>> emotional responses)?
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) ?complex nature of our experience? ? How do we
>>>> understand
>>>>> experience? Isn?t it also creative? Or are we back to
>>>> oppositions
>>>>> about active / passive, the singular and the
>>>> general. Experience
>>>>> seems to fall into the category of what Deleuze called
>>>> the problematic
>>>>> since it cannot be singular (yet we perceive it as
>>>> such), since it
>>>>> requires action, interaction, mediation, and some
>>>> creative
>>>>> interpretation. When we talk about ?our
>>>> experience? are we talking
>>>>> about something that is also a creative network ? that
>>>> is not owned by
>>>>> anyone?
>>>>>
>>>>> 3) artist genius as Foucault argued is now a
>>>> question of signature
>>>>> which means copyright and
>>>> legality. The social science network seems
>>>>> to operate on different principles and I would argue
>>>> that it is a
>>>>> platform designed to produce social creative
>>>> ontology.
>>>>>
>>>>> 4) I am curious about what people mean by the
>>>> ?ideology of the
>>>>> visual.? If images think then they must not think in
>>>> terms of
>>>>> language, but in terms of images, no? Therefore, if we
>>>> are talking
>>>>> ideology, aren?t we talking the creation of visual
>>>> concepts. The
>>>>> problem here is can a single image think, or do we
>>>> need a chain of
>>>>> images to think (like the Lacanian chain of
>>>> signifiers, i.e. the
>>>>> cinematic)? This has been debated since the
>>>> 1960s (Metz, Pasolini,
>>>>> Dayan, Mulvey, etc.)
>>>>>
>>>>> 5) When we talk about sense, we talk about it as
>>>> tacit knowledge.
>>>>> Where does sense take place: take vision for instance,
>>>> do we claim it
>>>>> only takes place in the brain? Or are there other
>>>> interfaces? Do they
>>>>> make sense?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 6) When we talk about Privacy or secrecy / trade
>>>> secrets (i.e., no
>>>>> open lab) then yes, innovation needs privacy in its
>>>> inception. (This
>>>>> is the subject of my husband's Mario Biagioli?s,
>>>> current work, "From
>>>>> Ciphers to Confidentiality" in States of Secrecy).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 7) Intimacy leads us in a completely different
>>>> direction. Privacy is
>>>>> the problematic term here: when we refer to secrecy
>>>> (in terms of
>>>>> innovation, we are talking trade secrets, and nothing
>>>> intimate), but
>>>>> rights to privacy do touch on this, yet again, privacy
>>>> seems to me,
>>>>> not to be intimate. Innovation or creative
>>>> communities need not be
>>>>> intimate, unless we are redefining what this term
>>>> means. Also, I am
>>>>> not sure that intimacy is related to place.
>>>>>
>>>>> But this leads to the question of platforms as
>>>> space. How does a site
>>>>> relate to space? Yes, we can reveal intimate secrets
>>>> on such sites,
>>>>> but there is something spatially distinct an
>>>> estrangement, and at the
>>>>> same time the spectacular (as Victor Burgin argues).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body,
>>>> registered in
>>>>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> empyre forum
>>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in
>>>> Scotland, number SC009201
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 4
>>> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:47:15 +0100
>>> From: James Leach <james.leach at abdn.ac.uk>
>>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
>>> Message-ID: <94F4AAE2-DBBC-46B0-8EAB-E24A2FC8E115 at abdn.ac.uk>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> Thanks to Simon for inviting me on board. With so much said already,
>>> trying to cover all the points made so far will be too much for me.
>>> Forgive the late entry into the discussion (I was away all last
>>> week), and the partial nature of the response and these thoughts.
>>>
>>> Euginio started us off last week with a welcome caution about the
>>> idea of creativity.
>>>
>>> The idea of creating something from nothing, as he said, is
>>> necessarily outside human experience (by definition) in the
>>> Judeo-Christian mytho-poetic worldview. Simon generously cited some
>>> of my work on a small village on the Northern Coast of Papua New
>>> Guinea, where I divined a rather different place for ?creativity?,
>>> stemming from a different mythically structured consciousness of the
>>> place of humans in their world. Creativity is not a distant and
>>> sought after ideal that can be turned, on appearance, into an
>>> individually attributed good, but is inherent in the actions of
>>> human beings as they make and remake their position as humans ? that
>>> is, engage in acts that are consciously and explicitly geared to
>>> establishing gendered bodies (initiations) and resultant separations
>>> between kinsmen (and emergent named places in the landscape) so
>>> that (re)productive exchange is necessary.
>>>
>>> In Reite novelty, innovation, invention etc. are not goal of human
>>> action. Creativity is not outside human experience, but part of its
>>> everyday reality. Creativity is inherent in what it is to be a human
>>> being because in myth, the actions referred to above, beginning
>>> with the acts which established gender, and thus the possibilities
>>> for human reproduction and kinship, were the actions of the first
>>> human beings constituting themselves as human and not something
>>> else. In their everyday lives of gardening, animal husbandry,
>>> hunting etc., these people are the same as those first creator
>>> beings, and thus are constantly partaking of the original
>>> ?creativity? as they also constitute their lives as human and not
>>> something else.
>>>
>>> Most/all things Reite people do have an aesthetic dimension ? their
>>> subsistence horticulture, for example, always involves ?ritual?
>>> forms of planting; things of symmetry and some beauty, that are
>>> there for the pragmatic purpose of drawing the correct relations
>>> between people, spirits, other people at a distance from the garden
>>> etc., at the heart of the garden space. They make fabulous objects
>>> for self-decoration, compose extraordinary music, and so forth, all
>>> as aspects of the processes of production, kinship, lifecycle
>>> changes, reproduction.
>>>
>>> However, it seems to make little or no sense to call any of these
>>> things ?art?, as they are not separated from everyday and prosaic
>>> acts ? and those acts, as I have said, are the ones that reproduces
>>> the world (makes it appear over and again - Latour) in the form
>>> recognisable as a human world, to Reite people. But unlike the world
>>> Latour describes, they are not in the business of consciously
>>> creating ?the social?, or ?society? as an entity that can be
>>> discussed, analysed etc,
>>>
>>> Maybe all I am doing here is concurring with the thread already
>>> established about Foucault, the artists, identity and copyright as
>>> dependent on a particular place for ?creativity? in western, and
>>> institutionalised, understandings of society.
>>>
>>> But I thought to go somewhere else: and that is to talk about
>>> responsibility.
>>>
>>> I noted in Euginio?s comments that despite suspicion with the term,
>>> it is very hard for any of us to avoid the positive moral valence of
>>> ?creativity?. In his stimulating post, ?constructively?, ?common
>>> good?, ?mutual trust? etc. appeared. My short description of Reite
>>> above could be read to speak of ?constructive? actions in the
>>> ?common good?. But I think that would be to mistake what is going
>>> on, deceived by the conceptual associations of our own understanding
>>> of creativity, and partaking of the kind of ?constructionist? view
>>> of the social world that Latour refers to.
>>>
>>> In Reite, the acts that create the human world as it appears are
>>> also the acts that make death inevitable, competition and suspicion
>>> between people vying for control over the power to reproduce
>>> themselves through relationships to other, etc.
>>>
>>> So everything for these people can be, and is, explained by the
>>> actions of other humans or their associated sentient beings in the
>>> land or forest. There are no accidents, no landforms, weather events
>>> ? all the things we think are there beyond and outside human
>>> ?creativity? - that are not the responsibility of people. All
>>> illness and death there is the direct responsibility of other
>>> sentient beings, and mainly human ones. In other words, being
>>> creative of the world is also to be unavoidably responsible for its
>>> destruction.
>>>
>>> That brings me on to say that to want to be creative is a very
>>> different thing from the kind of creative/destructive power that
>>> exists in Reite.
>>>
>>> Having said all that, and given the underlying premise of all the
>>> above is that we, just as Reite people do, constitute our existences
>>> through the particular way we engage in relations to each other
>>> (social ontology), structured through certain key principles
>>> available in myths we tell ourselves about how we have got here and
>>> what our responsibilities as human being are -- what are we to make
>>> of the current idea that somehow the mediation of human relations
>>> through technological networks will make us more ?creative??
>>>
>>> What is it about the speeding up of communication, the mediation of
>>> geographical and social distance, that makes us believe (and I use
>>> the word consciously) that we are going to be doing anything very
>>> different?
>>>
>>> We are constantly telling ourselves that the world is changing
>>> rapidly, that things are speeding up, that technology is now the
>>> condition of our existence, its ongoing development and the
>>> consequences of that, outside human control.
>>>
>>> But as Kriss points to in her comments, these images do political
>>> work. The faith and horror in technology is, as always, a projection
>>> of the faith and horror in the human ability (or lack of it) to
>>> change their circumstances. The personnel who may have control over
>>> that change seems to have shifted. And hence the hope in
>>> technologically mediated futures. But looking at the fine grain of
>>> the worlds and ?communities? created in this mediated space, many
>>> familiar themes emerge: exclusions, emergent hierarchies, control
>>> and secrecy etc.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Can we help but be creative?
>>>
>>> What is it we are creating if we think of creativity as a social ontology?
>>>
>>> Is it something we can dip in and out of, chose to do, or avoid?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre mailing list
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>> End of empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10
>>> **************************************
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
>> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:47:27 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <C86497BF.28CE7%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> As I suggested in my earlier post today, which Kriss picked up on, I am
> looking at agency and creativity from an autopoietic point of view. I am not
> seeking to situate agency in the individual but in the collective and,
> specifically, in the in-between. This could be considered a "gathering",
> although this suggests a sense of common purpose, individuals recognising
> they can enhance their capacity to act, to bring themselves and the world
> into being, through collective action. That isn't what I am trying to get
> at. Of course, I am wearing my artists hat when I suggest this and am not
> really equipped to defend what is possibly an indefensible position.
> Nevertheless, I think it is an interesting line of thought.
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
> Skype: simonbiggsuk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
> http://www.elmcip.net/
> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>
>
>> From: James Leach <james.leach at abdn.ac.uk>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:02:33 +0100
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>
>> But Simon, you also are keen to explore the emergent possibility,
>> to actually
>> look at what is made visible in emerging digital networked forms that is not
>> visible in previous ways of working?
>>
>> What is being gathered? what are the constraints on those
>> gatherings? and what
>> is created through them - ie, what changes because of them?
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:35:44 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Eugenio Tisselli <cubo23 at yahoo.com>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <963172.14367.qm at web50206.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Hi all,
>
> Kriss, I'm still here. I'm very interested in the ways in which the
> discussion is unfolding, and would like to add some comments:
>
> Kriss said:
>
>> When we talk about networked communities and their limits
>> some of these limits (I assume are not human), does that
>> give them agency in the same way.? That is, how can we
>> claim to isolate creativity, or community for that matter by
>> placing exclusions / anxieties, etc.? When we talk
>> about inclusion or anxiety, what is the issue, are these
>> always possibilities? Are they always the premise? Most of
>> the theories of community (recent ones, do attempt to think
>> beyond exclusions, starting with Agamben's Coming Community,
>> and various others on the Italian left). Yet these theories
>> are also moving away from state-based (ethnic and
>> nationalist) understandings of community as temporary ?
>> problem oriented rather than identity oriented.
>
> I am not aware of Agamben's theories, but I would like to point
> towards Anthony P Cohen's book, "Symbolic construction of
> community"(1985), in which he explores the idea of how communities
> define their boundaries in an emergent way, by the constant symbolic
> exchanges going on within them. Assuming an essential separation
> between symbol and meaning, Cohen argues that a community subsists
> by sharing symbols, which may have different meanings for each of
> its members, but that nevertheless hold the capacity to create
> bonds. He focuses on rituals which, through the effects of
> repetition go through an erosion of meaning: they become purely
> symbolic. Yet, even if thes rituals are bascically senseless (I am
> thinking about a number of religious festivities in different parts
> of Spain: while their original meanings are practically forgotten,
> they are still celebrated), they provide a context in which people
> re-create their existence as a community (breaking thus
> the ultra-individualistic mode of daily life)
> So, it's not just exclusion or anxiety: it is also getting together
> from time to time and remembering what is it that we have in common
> with others around us. This I would call "community intimacy": the
> moments and places in which communities realize (in the sense of
> "making real") the act of sharing things which are deeply rooted in
> their souls... as opposed to daily life, where people normally keep
> to themselves. As Cohen reminds us, communities are both practical
> and ideological: they are made up of very real people, things and
> exchanges, and at the same time they exist as ideals.
>
> James said:
>
>> Perhaps then we should be looking to examine not what is made possible
>> by digital networks ('new creativity'), but at their limits? The way
>> they partake of and re-present the principles that have constituted
>> the > place of 'creativity' and 'art'?
>
> The experience I have had with my work so far has been mostly with
> "hybrid" communities: groups of people who get together face to
> face, but also in virtual environments. I believe that the limits of
> digital networks are compensated by physical gatherings, and
> vice-versa. Of course, it is not always possible to bring about this
> sort of experience, but I believe it propitiates an environment in
> which people can potentially get the best of both worlds. There are
> elements in each which can encourage creativity: in gatherings,
> people get to socialize and thus build relations of trust. They find
> common interests and goals, and start to imagine together. In a
> digital network, people find tools to empower communication:
> folksonomies, maps, multimedia communication, etc. So, to wrap this
> up, I would say that gatherings provide a "heart" and "spirit" for
> the group, and that digital networks provide tools for efficacy.
> When combined, these elements can result in
> powerful creative endeavors.
>
> Best,
> Eugenio.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:46:58 +0200
> From: Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <20100715094658.GC4789 at mail.ljudmila.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Hi,
>
> ..on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 09:33:12AM +0100, Simon Biggs wrote:
>> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
>> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>> everything together.
>
> Isn't this also the trajectory that Bergson takes ('Matter and Memory',
> 'Creative evolution', quasi-objects) and even the rather enigmatic Serres?
> Cybernetics touches on this also, at its more abstract extents.
>
>> The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
>> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
>> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
>> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>
> Intention. A 'will of things' one could say.
>
> In the case of quantum physics it is evidence of perception as a productive
> subjectivity, an old idea in philosophy and folklore. Bergson's take is that
> matter is so deeply bound to the perception of it - alongside
> actions around and
> with it - that Matter, Time and Mind must be considered part of the same
> creative, generating system.
>
> This may appear to depend on consciousness too much to satisfy your question.
> His answer might be that in order to consider matter independent from agency,
> from consciousness, we become immediately dependent on such
> abstractions as The
> Universe, the very idea of matter, linear time or Numbers, none of
> which exist
> in themselves, of course.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Julian Oliver
> home: New Zealand
> based: Berlin, Germany
> currently: Berlin, Germany
> about: http://julianoliver.com
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:24:32 +0200
> From: Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
> To: { brad brace } <bbrace at eskimo.com>
> Cc: soft_skinned_space <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology
> Message-ID: <20100715102432.GJ4789 at mail.ljudmila.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> ..on Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 09:00:59AM -0700, { brad brace } wrote:
>> My FB account with 5000 appreciative 'friends' was
>> immediately disabled once I began to sell collections of
>> (enhanced/enlarged) profile portraits. The hierarchical
>> social network hasn't changed a bit.
>>
>> I've moved the project here:
>>
>> PROXY Gallery
>> http://cart.iabrace.com
>
> This is a great/interesting project. A clever diversion of Social Capital.
>
> Congrats,
>
> --
> Julian Oliver
> home: New Zealand
> based: Berlin, Germany
> currently: Berlin, Germany
> about: http://julianoliver.com
>
>>
>> On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Julian Oliver wrote:
>>
>> > > I wonder if exclusiveness (not necessarily understood as a
>> negative feature)
>> > > is the only necessary ingredient for intimacy... ?
>> >
>> > The very basis of a community depends on a logic of exclusion;
>> any community
>> > represents a grouping around a common interest, whether that be
>> needs, fetisches
>> > or topics. To defend those interests - even if that requires
>> excluding others -
>> > is to invest in the health of the community.
>> >
>> > A society itself can be understood as an expression of exclusion;
>> membership
>> > is only granted to those that prove compatibility with the
>> existing interest(s).
>> > For this reason, a discussion around 'Intimate networks' could be
>> more aptly
>> > (but less fashionably) named 'Exclusive Networks'.
>> >
>> > The Local Area Network of your apartment or school expresses this
>> exclusion with
>> > (the somewhat depolitised) WEP or WPA encryption. An IRC channel
>> excludes those
>> > that do not demonstrate respect for the channel topic. A town in
>> the South of
>> > the U.S.A might do so by making the newcomers feel generally
>> horrible about
>> > being there until they expressly prove a compatible interest.
>> >
>> > Exlusion has an awful name, largely due to xenophobic, classist projects
>> > throughout history, but we're all already practicing exclusion in
>> the interests
>> > of our cherished communities every day. In consideration of this
>> topic, one
>> > could say any social network is the industrialisation of social exclusion
>> > (network anxiety) - "Am I your friend or not"?
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> global islands project:
>> http://bbrace.net/id.html
>>
>> "We fill the craters left by the bombs
>> And once again we sing
>> And once again we sow
>> Because life never surrenders."
>> -- anonymous Vietnamese poem
>>
>> "Nothing can be said about the sea."
>> -- Mr Selvam, Akkrapattai, India 2004
>>
>> { brad brace } <<<<< bbrace at eskimo.com >>>> ~finger for pgp
>>
>> --- bbs: brad brace sound ---
>> --- http://69.64.229.114:8000 ---
>>
>> .
>> The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project >>>> posted since 1994 <<<<
>>
>> + + + serial ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/b/bbrace
>> + + + eccentric ftp:// (your-site-here!)
>> + + + continuous hotline://artlyin.ftr.va.com.au
>> + + + hypermodern ftp://ftp.rdrop.com/pub/users/bbrace
>> + + + imagery http://kunst.noemata.net/12hr/
>>
>> News: alt.binaries.pictures.12hr alt.binaries.pictures.misc
>> alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.misc alt.12hr
>>
>> . 12hr email
>> subscriptions => http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/buy-into.html
>>
>>
>> . Other | Mirror: http://www.eskimo.com/~bbrace/bbrace.html
>> Projects | Reverse Solidus: http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/
>> | http://bbrace.net
>>
>> . Blog | http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/wordpress/
>>
>> . IM | bbrace at unstable.nl
>> . IRC | #bbrace
>> . ICQ | 109352289
>> . SIP | bbrace at ekiga.net
>> | registered linux user #323978
>> ~>
>> I am not a victim Coercion is natural
>> I am a messenger Freedom is artifical
>>
>> /:b
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:51:52 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <C864B4E8.28D14%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> Hi Julian
>
> Yes, all your points are of interest. I hadn't thought of the Serres
> connection, but clearly as this is to do with the autopoeitic then
> cybernetics is part of the mix, particularly that of Maturana and Varela.
>
> Bergson's view is echoed during the modern era by Heissenberg, who was less
> caught up with questions of consciousness as a philosophical problem (not
> that the problem goes away) but engaged it similarly as a factor in
> evaluating phenomena.
>
> More broadly, you could place this whole debate within a phenomenological
> frame, although it would create some anomalies.
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
>
> Simon Biggs
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
> Skype: simonbiggsuk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
> http://www.elmcip.net/
> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>
>
>> From: Julian Oliver <julian at julianoliver.com>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:46:58 +0200
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> ..on Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 09:33:12AM +0100, Simon Biggs wrote:
>>> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>>> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
>>> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>>> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>>> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>>> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>>> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>>> everything together.
>>
>> Isn't this also the trajectory that Bergson takes ('Matter and Memory',
>> 'Creative evolution', quasi-objects) and even the rather enigmatic Serres?
>> Cybernetics touches on this also, at its more abstract extents.
>>
>>> The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
>>> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>>> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
>>> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>>> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
>>> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>>
>> Intention. A 'will of things' one could say.
>>
>> In the case of quantum physics it is evidence of perception as a productive
>> subjectivity, an old idea in philosophy and folklore. Bergson's take is that
>> matter is so deeply bound to the perception of it - alongside actions around
>> and
>> with it - that Matter, Time and Mind must be considered part of the same
>> creative, generating system.
>>
>> This may appear to depend on consciousness too much to satisfy your
>> question.
>> His answer might be that in order to consider matter independent
>> from agency,
>> from consciousness, we become immediately dependent on such abstractions as
>> The
>> Universe, the very idea of matter, linear time or Numbers, none of
>> which exist
>> in themselves, of course.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> --
>> Julian Oliver
>> home: New Zealand
>> based: Berlin, Germany
>> currently: Berlin, Germany
>> about: http://julianoliver.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:57:10 +1000
> From: Sean Cubitt <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <C86534B6.114BD%scubitt at unimelb.edu.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Absolutely so Simon: and more power to you for having the bottle to go
> ontological. The axiom can be -- should be -- further reduced: what is the
> materiality of the formative agency which constitutes relationships and
> forms things? (You already know which rabbit is in the hat, simon, but allow
> me the ta-dah moment): it is is mediation.
>
> Not communication: not every mediation communicates. Just that
> everything/process mediates every other contiguous process. This is the
> ontological nature of the human universe (to coin Charles Olson's usage): a
> person is a medium for other persons. But it is also the axiom of the entire
> sensory and physical universe.
>
> That places it however in the realm of the second law of thermodynamics: a
> univers eof pure flux runs down entropically. "Communication" for want of
> another term is the ordering of the flow of mediation. Any order is,
> especially among our species but certainly also among dogs, the species I
> know best of the rest, structural or in-formative. The questions are then
> about the modes of order applied to the raw stuff of mediation.
>
> The unit question is then a question about the mode of order applied in any
> specific media formation. Grosso modo, we are in an era characterised by
> unit enumeration (as opposed, for example, to the geometrical moment of the
> renaissance), so the question poses itself as unitary: as digital, as
> inflected by the exchange principle. On one hand this is why the temptation
> exists to seek out the individual. The effort of thinking otherwise -
> deleuze's 'dividual' for example - is troubling, but is necessary if we are
> to understand a) how the 'dark matter' becomes the medium (!) of privation
> and power ? that is the specific existential quality of the ontological at
> the given moment and b) how to operate on it in such a way as to form it
> otherwise - which is where the creative operates
>
> S
>
>
>
> On 15/07/10 6:33 PM, "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
>> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>> everything together. The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
>> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
>> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
>> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>
>> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>
>>
>>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:43:44 +0100
>>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there
>>> a will to
>>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>>
>>> I am not so sure that experience
>>> is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new
>>> left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"
>>> as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The
>>> difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to
>>> "object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community
>>> (dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the
>>> limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of
>>> the state).
>>>
>>> How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for
>>> a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his
>>> critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads
>>> back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human.
>>
>>
>>
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number
>> SC009201
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> Prof Sean Cubitt
> scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
> Director
> Media and Communications Program
> Faculty of Arts
> Room 127?John Medley East
> The University of Melbourne
> Parkville VIC 3010
> Australia
>
> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
> Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
> M: 0448 304 004
> Skype: seancubitt
> http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
> http://www.digital-light.net.au/
> http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
> http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
> http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
>
> Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
> http://leonardo.info
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:40:56 +0100
> From: "j.martin.pedersen" <m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk>
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <4C3F01D8.6010204 at lancaster.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
>
> ...
>
> On 15/07/10 09:33, Simon Biggs wrote:
>> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
>> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>> everything together. The units that are bound within this prima materia (for
>> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
>> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
>> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>
> Hmm... Yes, there is something to that in a spiritual sense - for me -
> but I am not sure that it would be agency, since I would like to
> maintain a creative, spiritual energy (or potential, ie. agency) located
> in me - and you - that could perform, be the creator of, instigator of,
> source of magic or at least its facilitator, in the sense that we
> perhaps find most neatly suggested in A Midsummer Night's Dream
> (Shakespeare, of course):
>
> ?And, as imagination bodies forth
> The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
> Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
> A local habitation and a name.
> Such tricks hath strong imagination,
> That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
> It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
> Or in the night, imagining some fear,
> How easy is a bush supposed a bear!?
>
> ..and to some degree also in the political phenomenology - if there is
> such a thing - in Sartre's musings on the imaginary (not that I have
> read it, but it sounds good!):
>
> "We may therefore conclude that imagination is not an empirical power
> added to consciousness, but it is the whole of consciousness as it
> realizes its freedom"
>
> But that of course, in a sense, takes us back to where you located it -
> I suspect - insofar as we consider consciousness a collective form.
>
> These are of course "merely" language games - discursive formations,
> narrative structures - that serve to explain what we cannot quite grasp,
> but is there not a good reason to maintain a creative agent - hence
> agency in ourselves - to cherish and work on, reflect on, and also, in
> the case of wankers (think politicians, capitalists...), hold accountable?
>
> In some Amazonian linguistic measures - on anecdotal note - to make
> sense of spiritual energies and magic acts, healing processes and so on,
> entities other than humans - animals and plants etc. - are also
> considered as having creative agency - thus the relational fields are
> energy flow and not agency, and agency is what can navigate, manipulate,
> reflect, deflect energies - and I think that is rather where I would
> want to go to transcend the more limited Western (Cartesian?) framework
> of mind, body and connections.
>
> A clarification: The "mystical" here, if anyone should see it as such,
> when seen from inside the Amazonian cosmovision (of which I have read
> very little, just been hanging out there for a few years with shamans in
> other dimensions, so this is a set of particular experiences
> gratuitously and opportunistically generalised): is very material.
> Indeed, energy flows are the foundation of all things material. (David
> Graeber writes some interesting stuff slightly relevant for these
> matters of flows and flows of matters with reference to a dispute
> between dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus [1]).
>
> The relations between people as "agency" - to my mind, in my imagination
> - leads to a muddle that I cannot navigate satisfactorily, but perhaps
> that is a circularity problem, in case your explanation is more to the
> point, and I am merely lacking proper access to the big web of agency. A
> question remains then, though: How do I get that access? What is my
> pilot and my fuel to interact, to stroll through energy flows of
> relations, if not my agency?
>
> In other words, Yes - contentious. What is it, that unit? So why not
> just stick with human agents? We have trancended the simple notion in
> our understanding, but end up in the same place with a new perspective.
> Do we need to throw the baby........?
>
> best,
> martin
>
> [1]: http://www.commoner.org.uk/10graeber.pdf
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:09:35 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <C864C71F.28D1F%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
> Hi Martin
>
> All good stuff, although I would resist any mystical interpretations of what
> I am considering. I see it as concerned with the materiality of things. You
> might be able to take a Lovelockian view of what I am proposing, although I
> am not entirely happy with that idea either. I am not proposing that there
> is a unified or unifying force at work.
>
> Sean has hit the nail on the head by identifying "dark matter" as mediation
> - with each instance of mediation distinct. It is like those other weak
> forces in nature (gravity, evolution, etc) which exert their influence ever
> so subtly with a simultaneous particularity and indifference to that which
> they are mediating.
>
> Best
>
> Simon
>
> Simon Biggs
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
> Skype: simonbiggsuk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
> http://www.elmcip.net/
> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>
>
>> From: "j.martin.pedersen" <m.pedersen at lancaster.ac.uk>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:40:56 +0100
>> To: <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>
>>
> ...
>
> On 15/07/10 09:33, Simon Biggs wrote:
>> I am using agency in a sense
>> that some might find contentious as I am
>> considering it as an ontological
>> phenomena in a context where individuals,
>> whether human or animal, alive or
>> inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>> agency is located. Rather, I am
>> entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>> is) the relationships between
>> things (whatever those things might be). In
>> this respect I am proposing a
>> folding of agency and creativity into one
>> thing which might be considered
>> somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>> everything together. The units that
>> are bound within this prima materia (for
>> want of a better term) might then
>> be considered rather like quantum
>> phenomena - the closer you look the more
>> you realise there is nothing there
>> and that it is the phenomena around the
>> unit that give it its apparent
>> properties. The subsequent question, of
>> course, is what is the unit (here I
>> include people)? Clearly there is
>> something there - but what?
>
> Hmm... Yes, there is something to that in a
>> spiritual sense - for me -
> but I am not sure that it would be agency, since I
>> would like to
> maintain a creative, spiritual energy (or potential, ie. agency)
>> located
> in me - and you - that could perform, be the creator of, instigator
>> of,
> source of magic or at least its facilitator, in the sense that we
> perhaps
>> find most neatly suggested in A Midsummer Night's Dream
> (Shakespeare, of
>> course):
>
> ?And, as imagination bodies forth
> The forms of things unknown, the
>> poet's pen
> Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
> A local habitation
>> and a name.
> Such tricks hath strong imagination,
> That, if it would but
>> apprehend some joy,
> It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
> Or in the night,
>> imagining some fear,
> How easy is a bush supposed a bear!?
>
> ..and to some
>> degree also in the political phenomenology - if there is
> such a thing - in
>> Sartre's musings on the imaginary (not that I have
> read it, but it sounds
>> good!):
>
> "We may therefore conclude that imagination is not an empirical
>> power
> added to consciousness, but it is the whole of consciousness as
>> it
> realizes its freedom"
>
> But that of course, in a sense, takes us back to
>> where you located it -
> I suspect - insofar as we consider consciousness a
>> collective form.
>
> These are of course "merely" language games - discursive
>> formations,
> narrative structures - that serve to explain what we cannot quite
>> grasp,
> but is there not a good reason to maintain a creative agent -
>> hence
> agency in ourselves - to cherish and work on, reflect on, and also,
>> in
> the case of wankers (think politicians, capitalists...), hold
>> accountable?
>
> In some Amazonian linguistic measures - on anecdotal note - to
>> make
> sense of spiritual energies and magic acts, healing processes and so
>> on,
> entities other than humans - animals and plants etc. - are also
> considered
>> as having creative agency - thus the relational fields are
> energy flow and not
>> agency, and agency is what can navigate, manipulate,
> reflect, deflect energies
>> - and I think that is rather where I would
> want to go to transcend the more
>> limited Western (Cartesian?) framework
> of mind, body and connections.
>
> A
>> clarification: The "mystical" here, if anyone should see it as such,
> when seen
>> from inside the Amazonian cosmovision (of which I have read
> very little, just
>> been hanging out there for a few years with shamans in
> other dimensions, so
>> this is a set of particular experiences
> gratuitously and opportunistically
>> generalised): is very material.
> Indeed, energy flows are the foundation of all
>> things material. (David
> Graeber writes some interesting stuff slightly
>> relevant for these
> matters of flows and flows of matters with reference to a
>> dispute
> between dispute between Parmenides and Heraclitus [1]).
>
> The relations
>> between people as "agency" - to my mind, in my imagination
> - leads to a muddle
>> that I cannot navigate satisfactorily, but perhaps
> that is a circularity
>> problem, in case your explanation is more to the
> point, and I am merely
>> lacking proper access to the big web of agency. A
> question remains then,
>> though: How do I get that access? What is my
> pilot and my fuel to interact, to
>> stroll through energy flows of
> relations, if not my agency?
>
> In other words,
>> Yes - contentious. What is it, that unit? So why not
> just stick with human
>> agents? We have trancended the simple notion in
> our understanding, but end up
>> in the same place with a new perspective.
> Do we need to throw the
>> baby........?
>
> best,
> martin
>
> [1]:
>> http://www.commoner.org.uk/10graeber.pdf
> _____________________________________
>> __________
> empyre
>> forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 11
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:10:44 +0100
> From: "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <C864C764.28D20%s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
> Is "going ontological" similar to going nuclear?
>
> Simon Biggs
> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
> Skype: simonbiggsuk
> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>
> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
> http://www.elmcip.net/
> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>
>
>> From: Sean Cubitt <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au>
>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:57:10 +1000
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will to
>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>
>> Absolutely so Simon: and more power to you for having the bottle to go
>> ontological. The axiom can be -- should be -- further reduced: what is the
>> materiality of the formative agency which constitutes relationships and
>> forms things? (You already know which rabbit is in the hat, simon, but allow
>> me the ta-dah moment): it is is mediation.
>>
>> Not communication: not every mediation communicates. Just that
>> everything/process mediates every other contiguous process. This is the
>> ontological nature of the human universe (to coin Charles Olson's usage): a
>> person is a medium for other persons. But it is also the axiom of the entire
>> sensory and physical universe.
>>
>> That places it however in the realm of the second law of thermodynamics: a
>> univers eof pure flux runs down entropically. "Communication" for want of
>> another term is the ordering of the flow of mediation. Any order is,
>> especially among our species but certainly also among dogs, the species I
>> know best of the rest, structural or in-formative. The questions are then
>> about the modes of order applied to the raw stuff of mediation.
>>
>> The unit question is then a question about the mode of order applied in any
>> specific media formation. Grosso modo, we are in an era characterised by
>> unit enumeration (as opposed, for example, to the geometrical moment of the
>> renaissance), so the question poses itself as unitary: as digital, as
>> inflected by the exchange principle. On one hand this is why the temptation
>> exists to seek out the individual. The effort of thinking otherwise -
>> deleuze's 'dividual' for example - is troubling, but is necessary if we are
>> to understand a) how the 'dark matter' becomes the medium (!) of privation
>> and power ? that is the specific existential quality of the ontological at
>> the given moment and b) how to operate on it in such a way as to form it
>> otherwise - which is where the creative operates
>>
>> S
>>
>>
>>
>> On 15/07/10 6:33 PM, "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>>> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where individuals,
>>> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not where
>>> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of (or
>>> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>>> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>>> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>>> everything together. The units that are bound within this prima
>>> materia (for
>>> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>>> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing there
>>> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>>> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here I
>>> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> Simon
>>>
>>>
>>> Simon Biggs
>>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
>>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>>
>>> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>>>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:43:44 +0100
>>>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is
>>>> there a will to
>>>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>>>>
>>>> I am not so sure that experience
>>>> is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new
>>>> left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"
>>>> as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The
>>>> difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to
>>>> "object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community
>>>> (dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the
>>>> limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of
>>>> the state).
>>>>
>>>> How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for
>>>> a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his
>>>> critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads
>>>> back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number
>>> SC009201
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>> Prof Sean Cubitt
>> scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
>> Director
>> Media and Communications Program
>> Faculty of Arts
>> Room 127?John Medley East
>> The University of Melbourne
>> Parkville VIC 3010
>> Australia
>>
>> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
>> Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
>> M: 0448 304 004
>> Skype: seancubitt
>> http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
>> http://www.digital-light.net.au/
>> http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
>> http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
>> http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
>>
>> Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
>> http://leonardo.info
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
>
> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
> number SC009201
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 12
> Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:52:36 -0500
> From: christopher sullivan <csulli at saic.edu>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>, Simon Biggs
> <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>
> Cc: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a
> will to create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
> Message-ID: <1279216356.4c3f4ae49ed8d at webmail.artic.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi Sean, Simon, but to reduce to some primordial state, seams hardly a
> reflection of conscious behavior. It seams to lead to a human math,
> no good no
> bad, no empathy, just unconscious reaction. We are still operating
> our lives in
> the concrete world of language, (as this post supports, in it's
> verbosity) our
> physical bodies, the power and pleasure of both , and concrete functions of
> living our lives.
>
> The ontological is most useful to me as it weaves into the reality of human
> experience and the experience of empathy and the sense of the self and the
> other.. I Think that Simon is addressing this, talking about something
> philosophical, but also very tangible, and consequential, I think that is
> important.
> Chris Sullivan.
>
>
>
> Quoting Simon Biggs <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk>:
>
>> Is "going ontological" similar to going nuclear?
>>
>> Simon Biggs
>> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>>
>> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>> http://www.elmcip.net/
>> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>>
>>
>> > From: Sean Cubitt <scubitt at unimelb.edu.au>
>> > Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:57:10 +1000
>> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is there a will
>> to
>> > create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>> >
>> > Absolutely so Simon: and more power to you for having the bottle to go
>> > ontological. The axiom can be -- should be -- further reduced: what is the
>> > materiality of the formative agency which constitutes relationships and
>> > forms things? (You already know which rabbit is in the hat, simon, but
>> allow
>> > me the ta-dah moment): it is is mediation.
>> >
>> > Not communication: not every mediation communicates. Just that
>> > everything/process mediates every other contiguous process. This is the
>> > ontological nature of the human universe (to coin Charles Olson's usage):
>> a
>> > person is a medium for other persons. But it is also the axiom of the
>> entire
>> > sensory and physical universe.
>> >
>> > That places it however in the realm of the second law of thermodynamics: a
>> > univers eof pure flux runs down entropically. "Communication" for want of
>> > another term is the ordering of the flow of mediation. Any order is,
>> > especially among our species but certainly also among dogs, the species I
>> > know best of the rest, structural or in-formative. The questions are then
>> > about the modes of order applied to the raw stuff of mediation.
>> >
>> > The unit question is then a question about the mode of order applied in
>> any
>> > specific media formation. Grosso modo, we are in an era characterised by
>> > unit enumeration (as opposed, for example, to the geometrical moment of
>> the
>> > renaissance), so the question poses itself as unitary: as digital, as
>> > inflected by the exchange principle. On one hand this is why the
>> temptation
>> > exists to seek out the individual. The effort of thinking otherwise -
>> > deleuze's 'dividual' for example - is troubling, but is necessary if we
>> are
>> > to understand a) how the 'dark matter' becomes the medium (!) of privation
>> > and power ? that is the specific existential quality of the ontological at
>> > the given moment and b) how to operate on it in such a way as to form it
>> > otherwise - which is where the creative operates
>> >
>> > S
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On 15/07/10 6:33 PM, "Simon Biggs" <s.biggs at eca.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I am using agency in a sense that some might find contentious as I am
>> >> considering it as an ontological phenomena in a context where
>> individuals,
>> >> whether human or animal, alive or inert, physical or virtual, are not
>> where
>> >> agency is located. Rather, I am entertaining the idea that agency is of
>> (or
>> >> is) the relationships between things (whatever those things might be). In
>> >> this respect I am proposing a folding of agency and creativity into one
>> >> thing which might be considered somewhat like a dark matter which binds
>> >> everything together. The units that are bound within this prima materia
>> (for
>> >> want of a better term) might then be considered rather like quantum
>> >> phenomena - the closer you look the more you realise there is nothing
>> there
>> >> and that it is the phenomena around the unit that give it its apparent
>> >> properties. The subsequent question, of course, is what is the unit (here
>> I
>> >> include people)? Clearly there is something there - but what?
>> >>
>> >> Best
>> >>
>> >> Simon
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Simon Biggs
>> >> s.biggs at eca.ac.uk simon at littlepig.org.uk
>> >> Skype: simonbiggsuk
>> >> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
>> >>
>> >> Research Professor edinburgh college of art
>> >> http://www.eca.ac.uk/
>> >> Creative Interdisciplinary Research into CoLlaborative Environments
>> >> http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/
>> >> Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice
>> >> http://www.elmcip.net/
>> >> Centre for Film, Performance and Media Arts
>> >> http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/film-performance-media-arts
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> From: Kriss Ravetto <k.ravetto at ed.ac.uk>
>> >>> Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> >>> Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:43:44 +0100
>> >>> To: <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>> >>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 10 / is
>> there a will
>> to
>> >>> create / the social beyond the mechanisim?
>> >>>
>> >>> I am not so sure that experience
>> >>> is agency ? but you probably mean something other than what the new
>> >>> left means when you say this. Also we are not arguing for the "will"
>> >>> as James points out, but something that is also autopoetic, no? The
>> >>> difference between the term "thing"(process) as opposed to
>> >>> "object"(dead forms) leads us to communication (process) community
>> >>> (dead)? So the relation is affirmative, but the definition (the
>> >>> limits) amount to its death (Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of
>> >>> the state).
>> >>>
>> >>> How is Ingold defining agency ? if I remember well he makes a case for
>> >>> a human centered study, something that Latour has refuted with his
>> >>> critique of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) ? Ingold "reads
>> >>> back to the mind of an agent," i.e, human.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland,
>> number
>> >> SC009201
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> empyre forum
>> >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>> >
>> > Prof Sean Cubitt
>> > scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
>> > Director
>> > Media and Communications Program
>> > Faculty of Arts
>> > Room 127?John Medley East
>> > The University of Melbourne
>> > Parkville VIC 3010
>> > Australia
>> >
>> > Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
>> > Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
>> > M: 0448 304 004
>> > Skype: seancubitt
>> > http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
>> > http://www.digital-light.net.au/
>> > http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
>> > http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
>> > http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
>> >
>> > Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
>> > http://leonardo.info
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > empyre forum
>> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>>
>> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number
>> SC009201
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
> Christopher Sullivan
> Dept. of Film/Video/New Media
> School of the Art Institute of Chicago
> 112 so michigan
> Chicago Ill 60603
> csulli at saic.edu
> 312-345-3802
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> End of empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 12
> **************************************
>
>
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