[-empyre-] agency lies in relationships
Linda Dement
lindadement at gmail.com
Sat Jul 17 08:42:07 EST 2010
love this
I have been thinking of this kind of thing for a while, more as a kind of
weather - air pressure, highs, lows, heat, cold - that rise and form and
articulate the ‘units’. The weather being generated by the units & their
activities & their environment as well as producing activity through the
units. A mutual co-arising. Agency, intent, will, being in the energy in
between, being in the constellation of the units (whatever they are -
objects, people, programs, places, animals, machines, music…). An idea maybe
being a ripple that moves various particles around, across that
constellation.
L
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:00 PM, <empyre-request at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>wrote:
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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<C8648658.28CD7%25s.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
> >>
> >> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> >> https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre
> >> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> >> empyre-request at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>
> >> You can reach the person managing the list at
> >> empyre-owner at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>
> >> 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<C861E8DE.28BDC%25s.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<C861E8DE.28BDC%25s.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<C86497BF.28CE7%25s.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<http://www.eskimo.com/%7Ebbrace/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<C864B4E8.28D14%25s.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<C86534B6.114BD%25scubitt 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<C864C71F.28D1F%25s.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<C864C764.28D20%25s.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
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre mailing list
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> End of empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 12
> **************************************
>
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