[-empyre-] Process as paradigm

[Lucas Evers]

greetings all,

first i want to thank you all for participating. both susanne and i are pleased our statements brought about this many interesting reactions. the discussion or conversation is divers. i would like to move from all that is said about the formalism of programming, which does not mean that i don't think that is of no interest. on the contrary. as antoine states that processes and programs are a new creation material that is not only true for digital or media arts, but for instance, as we look at the work of conditional design and the red fungus work of luna maurer (one of the conditional design members) brought beyond the point of the digital. it blends methods of the digital with the way people act as agents within a 'digital' and discrete set of rules.
www.poly-luna.com

one can say that the way artists or other creative actors, maybe even machines, are informed by the recent evolution of digital processes, brought them to look at social processes in a sort-like way they look at digital processes.
i think i can say that heath buntings 'status' project for instance certainly was inspired by his long standing work with digital media. the way in which he mapped the construction and parameters of ones identity was not only done as a mapping project (though static, the mapping images resemble the generative image very much), but also by investigating and acting with the systems parameters, resulting in altering the identity of one of the persons he conducted his mapping research with.
http://status.irational.org/visualisation/maps/A1000_a_citizen_of_a_schengen_agreement_nation_state.pdf

today i talked to adam hyde, discussing a so called booksprint event, a set number of people writing a book within five days, we are planning, for which he build a collaborative online environment. also here i think i can say he blends the insights of the way digital media function in themselves with social processes. one can argue whether the booksprint is a work of art, a process it certainly is, since there never necessarily is an end copy of the final book as it can always have additional chapters.
www.booki.cc

speaking of books: within the exhibition process as paradigm manu luksch and mukul patel present the work 'love, piracy and the office of religious weblog expansion'. the work is about censorship in the digital era and beyond. it holds a text by iranian writer ali alizadeh. of which every but one word in each copy of the book is crossed out. the one that buys a copy can visit a site where he or she can submit the only word visible. if all do so the text will be revealed. the work requests people to act, not only making them a sort of digital agents, but also - if they act - making them say yes or no to censorship.
www.ambienttv.net/love

there is many other works to name that have learned from digital process and program and sought to apply this knowledge outside of digital media. most bio artists come from digital arts for instance, though that move seems kind of obvious because of the similarities of codes and ware as in soft- and wetware. i do not want to claim that it is an entirely new practice but the way in which this digital knowledge is taken to see if other environments are programmable too can take art practice to science, to politics, to finance, to the societal and for me it raises an interesting question whether art can reach beyond the processes it is reflecting on. if scientific process can be interesting raw material for artists, can they really work with it and work with the natural sciences and its findings, can art be of importance to scientific methods, programs, processes? can new forms of collaborative practices in their methodology build on notions of the digital mean something for social change or more modest mean something for community art? the euro is said to have a life expectation of less than three years i heard. so called transactional art - art that uses economic principles - does not yet have a sub-genre that really intervenes in economy though uebermorgens 'google will eat itself' comes close.
http://gwei.org

i might sound naive but i am interested in art engaging in processes that are beyond the representational factor of art and what that does to art and its autonomy. that question not only converns art, but also politics, the societal, science. i think this is a relevant question in a world so radically changing.

lucas
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lucas evers II waag society  II  www.waag.org  II  nieuwmarkt 4  II  1012 cr amsterdam  II  netherlands  II  +31 20 5579898

On May 17, 2010, at 10:37 PM, Antoine Schmitt wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> many threads already flowing in this very interesting forum, which are very tempting to react to...
> 
> First, here is a link to the live online demonstration of my work that is exhibited in the Process is Paradigm exhibition : Still Living (you will need Shockwave). So that you can have a live idea.
> 
> I personally think that processes are a very powerful material for artists, especially well suited to talk about the contemporary world, where objects and products tend to become services, flux agents and systems, where the world becomes more and more programmable due to the increasing fusion between bits, programs, atoms, dollars, people, information, genes, etc... And programming is the simplest way to create a process nowadays and at the same time a radically new material for artists, in the sense that it enables the creation of action as such, something that was not possible before. So, after having used the terms algorithmic art, process art, cybernetic art, system art, generative art, software art, I personaly like to use the term _programmed art_, which was coined during discussions of the very rich Transitoire Observable group about exactly this topic.
> 
> The conditional design approach is interesting, though I also don't resonate too much with the logic aspect (I prefer the term intention there, to speak about the role of the artist). I once introduced the term _aesthetics of the cause_ to talk about artworks where both the artist and the spectators focus on the cause of what is experienced, like in programmed art. The cause in the aristote sense : the cause of what happens, in a causal way. Which brings us back to the process as an artistic material, for which I have been a proselytizer for a long time, since I wrote drafts for a manifesto myself back in my early days in 1998, with a youthful energy and cumbersomeness ;)
> 
> I think that programming is a radically new artistic material in art history, because it allows the artist and the spectators to focus on _action_ as such. This gives us a brand new way to reflect on acting entities like humans and societies. This is also why life and nature are often subjects of programmed art, and why the bridges with political activism are so tempting. About this latter subject which has been brought up, I think that whether something is art or activism relates mainly to the context in which it is shown : the same work can be art in an art exhibition and a political action in a political rally or a public display.
> 
> Extending this train of thought, I think that programs and processes are a new creation material, but not only in the art field. I'm looking forward to experimenting programmed political pamphlets, programmed philosophical thesis. And I'm actually surprised not to have encountered many of them yet, like a real political virus for example, something that _really_ acts on reality.
> 
> One last point on the similarities between the art process and the scientific approach on a common material like processes : the intentions are clearly not the same. They are perpendicular or even opposite. Science wants to explain everything. Art wants to play with the distance between reality and its representation. Art plays with the cracks, science fills them up. The goals are different, even if the means look similar.
> 
> Jeez, I can't believe that I wrote such a long email, and with so many opinions in it. Must be because I'm writing from a plane to north america and I'm getting influenced by its rhetorical traditions... ;) But I must say that it is rare enough to be able to have discussions on what I believe is a radically new creation material in human history (no less). Thanks to Susanne and Lucas for allowing this.
> 
> Cheers !
> 
> ++ as
> 
> 
> 
> 
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