[-empyre-] ambiguous artistic strategies & critical engineering

[davin heckman]

Having worked in a field of criticism where a lot of the theory originates
with artists/programmers, I'd have to say that there is some value in being
committed to a sort of naive pluralism.  I agree with Simon that literacy
requires more than a mere superficial grasp of language, I would also like
to suggest that literacy cannot require a comprehensive grasp of language.
A great poet, for instance, does not need to master grammar or etymology,
in some cases, the poet can do everything necessary with an appreciation
for the sounds of langauge.  Also, a poet does not necessarily need to
worry about sound, but could accomplish much with an understanding of a
particular form or structure.

With technical systems, we are talking about much more than computer
programming.  In some cases, a tight focus on programmerly language comes
at the expense of the larger cultural scripts within which the programmed
object operates.  That we are rapidly developing deep habits with regards
to mobile devices also means that an aspect of understanding how computers
"work" in a broad sense has a great deal to do with the ubiquity of the
commodity, the politics of hidden labor, the absent-mindedness with which
humans make the abysmal leap from being tool using animals to being
subroutines of automated systems.  Which, ironically, indicates the need
for the kind of literacy we are talking about: Understanding the logic and
function of complex systems.

However, we might also need to reexamine the old critical model, pull out
the supressed aspects of this tradition, and guard ourselves against the
fetishized aspects.  The critical tradition has always been rooted in a
process of dialogue and a social contract.  Yet, in the spirit of the
Enlightenment, we tend to individualize critical accomplishments, hanging
author names on specific ideas, and implying that critical understanding is
a product of individual genius.  Yet, the entire time, these great works
were accompanied by the production of countless creative works, the
development of archives, indexes, face-to-face conversations, written
arguments, a system of publication, norms for documentation, and a
university committed to fostering this kind of activity.

My abilities as a computer programmer do not go beyond basic html, some
dabbling with action script, fidgeting with databases, and a committed
curiosity to what other people can do and how they do it.  Thus, I am
utterly dependent on the artists' willingness to share, access to free
information about the way technologies work, a collegial community willing
and able to correct me when I am wrong, the software developed by others,
the machines by still more, etc.  In other words, I am hopelessly dependent
on a vast network of people to do the work that I do, and the work that I
do is hopelessly inadequate to the task of the constituent parts.  I am not
advocating a return to Kant, but it strikes me that critical thinking still
parallels Kant's understanding of the role of philosophy within the realm
of knowledge: The Lower Faculty, not expert in any field, thus enabled to
make more comprehensive claims about human experience.

What we have today that Kant didn't have, is broader access to information
and greater means for embarking on the sort of philosophical discourse that
the University enabled.  But a major stumbling block is our investment in
individuality, which pushes us unecessarily towards self-sufficiency as a
pre-requisite for competence.  However, it is our self-inusfficiency that
requires us to build human systems, communities, which enables collective
competence.  I see something promethean in this.  Technology offers each of
us the hope of greater agency.  It exploits one concept of humanism
inherited from the enlightenment, that of individuality, to secure our
dependency on a technical system that is superior to us (Notice that we are
warned not to let human interests interfere in "the economy" for fear that
it will stifle "growth" and "innovation.")  Further, this reinforces the
sort of limited literacy that Simon warns us about (Use the stuff, don't
make it.  Develop a cargo-cult view.)  All the while, the actual
achievement of human agency via collective effort is hidden from us, doled
out in regulated doses, administered by managers, filtered by consciousness
industries.  It is as though the gods are withholding from us the secret of
fire, hiding us from what we could be, channelling our communal impulses
into wage labor, football games, and, when things get really bad, political
theatre.  But unlike the Promethean myth from the Enlightenment era, the
power that is withheld from us is that of collective effort....  it's not
the individual will...  it's the ability to cooperate, share, distribute,
network.

To bring it back to the point: The ideal state is a progressively improving
critical knowledge of the way things work.  The obstacle, perhaps, is the
impression that this critical knowledge needs to be individual while the
object of study is complex, mutable, and alien.  The workaround is
communities that contribute large packets of incomplete information,
coordinate and depug the information, and create shared resources for
critical thinking.  The goal, maybe, is to reclaim the commons, the human
subject, the good life without interference from the accidental
inheritances from the Enlightenment.

davin

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 12:17 AM, gh hovagimyan <ghh at thing.net> wrote:

>
> On Feb 9, 2012, at 10:18 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
>
>  In the case of computing this means a competency in programming.
>>
>
> gh responds:
> There's a crossover point between computing and physical perception.
>  Perhaps starting with Pascal and his discovery of the x,y matrix.
> Creating an abstraction and then turning it into a program to run on a
> computer is a logical process. The core artistic question is what you
> choose for your starting point in the real world that you then turn into
> an abstraction(algorithm). I tend to start with an art work I'd like to
> make or a series of perceptions
> I'd like to explore or convey in the digital world.  Why choose digital?
> Because the chain of logic in the process of abstraction allows me to
> examine all the
> perceptual components.  Indeed, once you are freed from the template of
> film or linear narrative or Rennaissance perspective or creating physical
> objects
> you can create new vehicles for sensations and emotions in the digital
> realm.
>
>
> ______________________________**_________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
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