[-empyre-] Process as paradigm: Time/Tools/Agency

Thu May 27 05:20:27 EST 2010

hi jacky

I am not a techno-fetishist and I wouldnt want a robotic garden, but there
are plenty of times when I forget or cant get to water the seedlings or open
the chook pen, especially when am away or too busy creating or working - I
imagine the time poor could benefit... i'd prefer a robot to save my
seedlings or my chooks than let them die on principles of low-tech
primitivism

the poor are recycling our trash computers and electronic gadgets now, but
mostly at the bottom of the production value ladder/chain/pyramid.. in the
global south (including the poor in the rich countries, a growing group)
where community gardens, allotments etc are growing and needed, there is
still a lot of room for utilitarian art with a tech-twist... open-source
designs that re-purpose consumer electronics and re-use them... mobile
phones for instance have become central to the technosphere in Africa and
Asia

automation is good if the surplus value is captured by the peoples work who
are being automated

we where at mondragon cooperative last year, and they have a lot of
robots... they have NEVER lost a job-member-owner due to automation

I think there needs to be much more merging of maker/new-media-art/design
culture with permaculture and the like

my feeling is there is too much focus on entertainment and novelty because
to face the realities of the world today is literally comprehending an
eco-apocalypse... denialism takes many forms, for the consumer masses its
drink, porn and TV... for the creative class its useless art and art
theory.. for the technorati its maker culture

I dont pretend or even care to understand most of the language on this list,
the post-modernist stuff is worse than the private language of
anti-globalisation activists or Marxist wonks or any other hyer-narrow
speciality

for me the key ideas are generative sequences, a series of life-giving,
transformative sequences..
that is whats unique to humans and if machines can start to do that, than
they should be destroyed as an abomination

http://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/generative.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_sciences
http://collegiateway.org/howto/sequence/
http://www.patternlanguage.com/leveltwo/sequences.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_theory

cheers

Nicholas Roberts

Permaculture Cooperative R&D project
skype permaculturecoop
email permaculturecoop at gmail.com
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On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 6:40 AM, sawatzky.jacky <sawatzky.jacky at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Eileen,
> And all.
>
> I know how you feel.
>
>
> Often I wonder with electronic art , what is the goal the use of
> electronics or the project? What does the use of electronics add, change,
>  to the experience/ awareness/knowledge/empowerment  of the audience ? For
> example opening the chicken coop (my favorite morning activity) consists of
> so much more then opening the coop e.g. looking for the eggs, feeding them ,
> seeing who is laying who not, is a chicken sick? ext, this is such a multi
> layered rich experience, which empowers me. (Only on the fact that I am not
> dependent on an electronic gadget)   If  an electronic gadget would take
> over, keeping chickens would become much to pragmatic for my taste. But
> pragmatics has a place. Electronic gadget as well as electronic arts have a
> danger of making a commodity of an experience/ empowerment/knowledge. Where
> is the art? WHat is the affect if something is  made into art? Adrian Parr
> writes in Hijacking Sustainability "The feeling of power is too often
> confused with the power to act as compared with a more affective notion that
> involved a power to affect and be affected. In other words , instead of
> asking  what power is and where it comes from , we need to ask how it is
> practiced." ( 16) (MIT-press, 2009)
>
> An example of this affect I have in my own life.
> In my twenties in lived in a circus wagon on a city nomad camp in the
> Netherlands (where I live) , this was not a political choice but a deep
> passion a love for this life, made political because it was unconventional
> and illegal.  It's neither art, though the wagon was an inspiration for
> people to make art.  I have seen projects like this camp created as an art
> project. But ... my question is what is your goal? Art or a place to life?
> do they exclude each other? If art, a whole other system starts coming in
> play, funding, the artist's goal, the 'exhibition'. For me these questions
>  also apply to electronic arts projects that address issues of environment.
>
> But I think there are very engaging electronic arts projects out there that
> have the possibility to add and change. How you use a gadget, when, why is a
> question that the insitutional funding/ publication/ exhibition system has
> difficulty with, the goal is often something else then the original intent.
> Which power(s) direct the process.
>
>
> As to the biodegradable computers , it would be great , but first and
> easier I would like a constant 'bettering' of electronic technology and
> computer application to slow down. Make computers that are meant to last 10
> years  or more with little maintenance and not 3?  The open source software
> movement and DIY computer building/upgrading workshops are inspiring
> outcomes of this.
>
> Jacky
>
> http://campwalks.blogspot.com/
> "Success is relative: it is what we can make of the mess we have made of
> things"
> -T.S Elliot
>
> On 26-May-10, at 1:12 AM, Eileen Reynolds wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> In regards to Nicholas Roberts nice ideas of:
> ..."for instance, was thinking about public art in community gardens that
> used wind, rain, sun and soil to manage the garden with sensors and water
> reticulation, with feedback to the web to citizen science and transition to
> sustainability citizen science projects, to climate change...
> webcams/art/droid/automations/scarecrows that take time series photos, and
> open the chicken-coop or water the seedlings, turn the compost, feed the
> worms.."
>
> I have a devil's advocate response to electronic art dealing with
> environmental issues.  Even though I have used  cameras, sensors,
> projectors, and computers in my work as well to speak about environment, I
> sometimes feel hypocritical and sad that I use these tools due to the
> electronic dumping in places like Nigeria, Vietnam, India, China and the
> Philippines...
>
>
> http://tobethechange.blogspot.com/2009/12/african-children-are-being-poisoned-by.html
>
> Just wish I was smart enough to create a biodegradable computer or cell
> phone. Anyone?
>
> -Eileen
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 11:36:10 -0700
> From: nicholas at themediasociety.org
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm: Time/Tools/Agency
>
> *plenty of opportunities for process as paradigm with purpose*
>
> I am going to chime-in and bang a few pieces together too
>
> I read an earlier version of this thread just after attending Maker Faire
> in San Mateo County in California; lots of tinkering for the sake of it,
> cute electronics, gee wiz electronics new media, fiery interactives, steam
> punk contraptions, robots, drones and all sorts of rather pointless
> high-tech toys
>
> there was a small, minority of makers who had strong purpose, a
> social/world changing mission and where makers, and process what their
> paradigm, but they had PURPOSE.. i,e save the world, educate kids, give
> mobility to poor people etc...
>
> http://permaculture.tv/ross-evans-from-tinkering-to-world-changing-maker-faire/
>
> then there was a big gap and the majority of the toy-makers
>
> it would of been great if there was lots more creativity, making, new media
> and installations connected to real problems
>
> for instance, was thinking about public art in community gardens that used
> wind, rain, sun and soil to manage the garden with sensors and water
> reticulation, with feedback to the web to citizen science and transition to
> sustainability citizen science projects, to climate change...
> webcams/art/droid/automations/scarecrows that take time series photos, and
> open the chicken-coop or water the seedlings, turn the compost, feed the
> worms
>
> household sensors for water taps and garbage bins that connect to creative
> user interfaces of recycled objects that move or make noise or give colors
> based on sustainability sensors, that again connect to the web or mobiles
> and give wonderful interfaces into sustainability transitions and citizen
> science
>
> to group interactive / visualisations that allow democratic decision making
> for illiterates, or multi-lingual, using mind-maps created from photos,
> video, documents etc, and would allow people to touch and interact and move
> virtual objects in a room or on a touchscreen or a mobile or webpage
>
> use of games like Scratch and Etoys, to create ecological activist parables
> that give a sense of soil food webs, community ecology, cooperation vs
> competition, game-theory, Elinor Ostroms commons, permaculture and
> agroecology... that could be installed on OLPC XO's so that kids the world
> over could learn about ecology online, build their own models of school
> gardens, share libraries of ecosystems, provide real data for citizen
> science projects... could use Modkit and Adruino and Processing and Scratch
> to interface to the garden automota art
>
> for a movement of visual and new media artists to provide engaging and
> inspiring visualisations into the massive data dumps coming from the open
> government and data initiatives of world governments i,e Obama's Open Gov
> Directive data.gov or the World Banks data.worldbank.org
>
> use drones such as UAV and home-made weather balloons and connect via SMS
> or mobile or HAM radio with web aggregators like Managing News or Ushahidi
> to provide useful and inspiring pictograph based generative codes for
> regenerating a society, an ecosystem after the disasters of an earthquake
> and the slow disasters of after-shock, the famine
>
> http://mobileactive.org/howtos/mapping-sms-incident-reports-review-ushahidi-and-managing-news
>
> counter-surveillance tools for communities facing the neo-liberal onslaught
> of the Shock Doctrine; mobile, SMS, web, OLPC based tools for citizens in
> distress to manage the BINGOs, mil, corporate contractors and media...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance#Countersurveillance.2C_inverse_surveillance.2C_sousveillance
>
> low-budget weather ballons that make low-tech, low budget maps of areas for
> citizens ecoligical and economic intelligence, DIY UAV drones that could
> fly-out an area and make maps of mines or extractive agrobusiness, i.e.
> logging the Amazon or Sumatra with powerful gut wrenching interactive
> visualisations and viral communications
>
> plenty of opportunities for process as paradigm with purpose
>
> --
> Nicholas Roberts
> skype permaculturecoop
> plans http://gaiapermaculture.com
> video http://Permaculture.TV
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 9:38 PM, christopher sullivan <csulli at saic.edu>wrote:
>
>
>
> kick me off this group if you like, but I cannot believe that in a world
> full of hunger, politics, love, sex, children, moose, you name it,
> that so many people think that Data, machines, are content.
>
> Eilean is making a valid comparison. At least I hope you realize that those
> using image and sound as generative content, are not just behind the times,
> we
> work differently than you, and to much success.
>  As a teacher I have told graduate students that I could not work with
> them,
> three times. one wanted to make fashionable purses, one was a color field
> painter (I sent them to fine color field enthusiasts) and one animator who
> said
> they where not interested in what there work was about. But in twenty years
> I
> have run into nothing but people who look at there medium as a tool. I much
> beloved tool, but a tool, a skill set, a craft, to be reckoned with
> historically,
> but not the content of there work..
>
>   this is not about age, (I am 49) my 20 year old students are as bored by
> glitches, chance operations, and algorithms as I am. a computer IS a tool.
> If
> you have a relationship with it, that is fine, but many complex thinkers,(I
> will call myself one) does look at my cameras, sound recorders, computers,
> as
> tools.
> We make our work about other things, like most filmmakers, writers,
> painters,
> play writes, have been doing forever.
>      Why are so many New Media artists and academics, embracing modernism
> at
> this moment in history. do we really have so little faith in having a
> meaningful dialogue with the world at large! where is your blood?
>
> from the Love, hate, sex, birth, death guy, Chris.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Erika Jean Lincoln <fur_princess at yahoo.ca>:
>
> > Hi Eileen,
> >
> > I am going to have to disagree on your comparison.
> > You stated that
> > > The image as output seems to me the most active agent
> > > because it is out in the world
> > > communicating.
> >
> > I don't think it is the image that communicates in the example we are
> looking
> > at if that was the case then why have any process at all. the software
> > communicates through the image.
> >
> > > However, if one is more
> > > interested in the the data set being "algorithmically"
> > > processed through a computer, then why waste the paper to
> > > create an image that is non active at the end?
> >
> > I think the image can still be a part of the work, I feel that the way
> the
> > work is described misplaces the location of the agency within the work.
> On
> > the larger question of agency and images and tools, I think to describe a
> > work as we are discussing by not talking about the software/hardware we
> do
> > just create an impression of "computer as tool".
> >
> > Your illustration of a painting on the wall in a museum painted centuries
> ago
> > cannot be used as an example. Time is not accounted for in the same way.
> > Leonardo and/or his helpers painted an image where time is not
> considered.
> > Yes it took time to make the work but that time was singular not to be
> > addressed again. The desire of the artist was to create the work as a
> > singular piece that exists in time the process stops when the artist puts
> > down the brush an says "Yep its done". Conservators exist to halt time on
> > such paintings, museums spend money to halt time on works.
> >
> > Where as a work that exists in space and is intended to change over time
> is
> > very different. Process denotes actions over time. I happened to be in
> > Toronto a couple of weeks ago and Hans Haacke's work Ice Stick was on
> > display, (someone mentioned Haacke's work in relation to this topic
> earlier).
> > It consists of a refrigeration unit, and condensed water vapor that is in
> the
> > form of a stick, for lack of a better description. the work exists in its
> > environment and changes over time. People may look at it and call it a
> giant
> > popsicle sculpture. But it cant be reduced to only one element, the
> popsicle
> > cant exist without its refrigeration unit which has to be plugged in to
> work,
> > and the gallery's environment. these elements are integral to the work,
> and
> > cannot be seen as tools displayed on a pedestal separate from the work.
> >
> > It is like the difference between the terms complicated and complexity
> that
> > N. Katherine Hayles describes in her book "My Mother was a Computer:
> Digital
> > Subjects and Literary Texts"
> >
> > Complicated: (within machines) parts interact with each other in defined
> and
> > predictable ways. reducible
> >
> > Complex: (computation) many parts interacting with one another to create
> > something different and unpredictable. non-reducible
> >
> >
> > Erika Lincoln
> > Electronic Media Artist
> > Winnipeg/Manitoba/Canada
> > http://www.lincolnlab.net
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 5/21/10, Eileen Reynolds (Asst Prof) <EReynolds at ntu.edu.sg>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > From: Eileen Reynolds (Asst Prof) <EReynolds at ntu.edu.sg>
> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm
> > > To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > > Received: Friday, May 21, 2010, 11:18 PM
> > > Hi Erika,
> > >
> > > The image as output seems to me the most active agent
> > > because it is out in the world
> > > communicating.   However, if one is more
> > > interested in the the data set being "algorithmicly"
> > > processed through a computer, then why waste the paper to
> > > create an image that is non active at the end?  If the
> > > production of the image is just a remnant and record of the
> > > computer's processing, then no, it is not an active agent,
> > > and only proof of the actively processing computer and its
> > > ability to do something.
> > >
> > > My other thought is the old classic - "the computer is just
> > > a tool".   And since we place these tools on
> > > such a high pedestal, perhaps the Louvre should instead
> > > display the paint brush that Leonardo used to paint the Mona
> > > Lisa rather than just the 30 × 20 inch remnant of the
> > > pigmented data set that he "algorithmicly" processed through
> > > the bristles. But I'm not too certain that would interest
> > > very many.
> > >
> > > -Eileen
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________________
> > > From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]
> > > On Behalf Of Erika Jean Lincoln [fur_princess at yahoo.ca]
> > > Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 11:38 PM
> > > To: soft_skinned_space
> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm
> > >
> > > Hi Maria, Yann,
> > > Isn't it more precise to say that the data set of the
> > > digital image is "algorithmicly" processed through an
> > > computer which leads to a different data set which is then
> > > represented as an image?
> > >
> > > To me the image is not the active agent.
> > > Thoughts?
> > >
> > > Erika Lincoln
> > > Electronic Media Artist
> > > Winnipeg/Manitoba/Canada
> > > http://www.lincolnlab.net
> > >
> > >
> > > --- On Thu, 5/20/10, Maria Verstappen <notnot at xs4all.nl>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > From: Maria Verstappen <notnot at xs4all.nl>
> > > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm
> > > > To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
> > > "Yann Le Guennec" <y at x-arn.org>
> > > > Received: Thursday, May 20, 2010, 11:37 AM
> > > > Dear Yann,
> > > > In the context of this exhibition the notion of
> > > "generative
> > > > image" can be taken quite literal as a still image
> > > that
> > > > generates the next image in real time. Subsequently
> > > this new
> > > > image forms the basis for the next image, etcetera. In
> > > case
> > > > of a screen based work, the viewer experiences this
> > > ongoing
> > > > sequence as a dynamic animation.
> > > > Maria
> > > >
> > > > On May 19, 2010, at 10:09 PM, Yann Le Guennec wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Hello dear Empyreans,
> > > > >
> > > > > systems are open;
> > > > > entropy is a mistake;
> > > > > boundaries are in the mind (of the 'modelizer'=
> > > > someone making a model);
> > > > > every process is part of n systems;
> > > > > quantum physics is a biface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biface);
> > > > > we build tools we need, to prove what we think;
> > > > > we use tools someone built (some day), to prove
> > > what
> > > > we thought (some day);
> > > > >
> > > > > but ... i would still like to know what is this:
> > > a
> > > > 'generative image';
> > > > >
> > > > > http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/714-catalogue
> > > > (PDF p: 55)
> > > > >
> > > > > Do you mean a picture can generate something, or,
> > > an
> > > > image is necessarily a mind projection ? in the
> > > future
> > > > (unforeseen) ?
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > best,
> > > > > yann
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > empyre forum
> > > > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > empyre forum
> > > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > empyre forum
> > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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 forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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