[-empyre-] empyre: engagement is all

[Gary Warner]

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

> "the  ever increasing ubiquity and pervasiveness of technology"
> is a long and durable existing paradigm, not a new one. Technologies have always been ubiquitous.

back in the studio - winter here, one of those benign sydney winter days where in sunlight there's palpable warmth but in shadow there's chill - the city is activating again, a thousand, a milllion technological devices connecting to power and each other, most perhaps automatically - they 'know' what to do… we, the definitive majority, the 99%, don't know how they do it… but we know for now 'we've' made them, so someone somewhere 'knows', right?

{then, aerial photo of crippled passenger jet, roof burnt open, charred, tail impact-amputated, sprawled, destroyed - wordpictures of people thrown from the gaping hurtling maw, screaming metal, screaming people, smoky silence…}

{then, aerial photo of rural township under billowing black cloud illuminated within by towering flame, black trunks of scorched street trees, charred rubble of collapsed buildings surrounding, anachronistic snowdrift white of dowsing foam billows, rolling stock fuel tanks piled together, twisted metal hulks, the desperate horror of soft-skinned bodies consumed, disappeared, 'missing'…}

consequences previously unimagined [but not unimaginable] - the ordinary everyday suddenly simultaneously collapsing into catastrophe and exploding onto the screens of consciousness throughout and around the networked world...

now, early thursday morning, whipping through the email before dropping back down the well of a friday production deadline, and a tooth exraction this afternoon… thankful for whatever dental technology advances ease that particular incursion into the soft-skinned space that I am…

oh yes, in answer to johannes' provocatively nuanced question -  kissed my partner goodbye in the pre-dawn light - and resisted the desire to sit and watch a few more vimeo chance encounters over tea and toast… 

kissing machines?  the frustrated desire of rene magritte's enshrouded lovers enacted in a neworked haptic relay artwork - lubricated machine rubber lips passing a human kiss from bristol to dubai to beijing and back again, perhaps…

machines kissing? does toshiba apripoco wonder about not having lips?

indeed, technologies have always been ubiquitous across human cultures - we need them it seems, to make meaning, the fundamental flame within our flickering being...

now, to resist the strong desire to sit and think, and type, and muse, and try to make some sense, make some meaning arise from the deep unknowable… its in our nature...

back to work!


…………………..
gary warner

0416 221 505

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32/94 oxford st
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nsw 2010
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…………………..





On 10/07/2013, at 3:53 PM, Johannes Birringer <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> hello soft_skinned place
> 
> 
> so have you resisted today? have you kissed someone today?
> 
> all kinds of images were going through my mind as I tried to imagine Gary Warner walking home after dusk from the Iseaplaces of invocation
> and citation (on old powerpoint slides), the "polity of digital arts like-mindedness", the "algorithmic second-guessing"  - that phrase made my day,
> as i also imagine Terry Flaxton now wandering the streets of Venice and the arsenals and encyclopedic palaces of art, and Paul Sermon reports
> his discomfort with centralized commercialized & defined practices as well as the tinted glasses of urbanized Isea. It's interesting, in response to
> Paul, to imagine Terry's long durational view of the human species as a reply, namely that "the  ever increasing ubiquity and pervasiveness of technology"
> is a long and durable existing paradigm, not a new one. Technologies have always been ubiquitous. Should we not ask what lies underneath
> the repeating proclamations of a paradigm change that is in need of "mapping"?  Who is mapping them for whom?
> 
> (I am missing all the conferences; here comes an announcement of 2013 DRHA (Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts conference):
>> 
> "Reconceptualising Digital Creativity; Re-mapping Behaviour, Engagement and Archiving in the 21 Century" //
> 
> The theme of this conference will focus on the need to re-conceptualize the ways in which we engage with digital technology in particular regard to the speed with which we are exposed to new technologies. As societies around the world face fundamental ecological, demographic and economic changes, we are forced to re-evaluate our relationship with natural and digital resources. Also, as the next generation of digital natives start to design new interactive futures, the old paradigms of knowledge exchange, and social interaction are making way for socialized gaming and crowd sourcing. The focus for this conference will be to re-imagining new and contemporary ways for designing digital engagement, looking at possible events and social practices that lay just around the corner. Interdisciplinary processes are assumed strategies in this conference so that we can focus on how we can, using contemporary technology, map the emerging digital and social landscape......
>> 
> 
> What do the conferences reflect, other than an industrial obligation (of academia) to engage "algorithmic second-guessing", and negligible resistances (to what?). I think Gary is highly ironic
> when mentioning the flickering engagement, the cascades......  What do we make of them?
> 
> The old paradigms of social interaction are not making way yet either, they are still obligatory, no?
> so are the streets on which we walk home.
> 
> regards
> Johannes Birringer
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

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