[-empyre-] responding to Nick, on Ex-communication and We are all informers

[Renate Terese Ferro]

Nick thank so much for sharing these links to your work on empyre.
Your mention of Snowden reminded me of a recent May 2014 discussion on
empyre featuring Geert Lovinck's e-flux essay "Hermes on the Hudson:
notes on new media after Snowden."

http://www.e-flux.com/journal/hermes-on-the-hudson-notes-on-media-theory-af
ter-snowden/

Lovink categorically believes that the Snowden affair was the
watershed moment when new media practices came to a grinding halt,"
The Snowden revelations in June 2013 mark the symbolic closure of the
³new media² era. The NSA scandal has taken away the last remains of
cyber-naivety and lifted the ³internet issue² to the level of world
politics."

You wrote:
>The materials that Snowden and the affiliated journalists have released
>starkly shows us the present state of things. Our metadata is being
>siphoned up in uncountable volumes...In short, we are all informers on
>ourselves.
We are dependent on these systems, on a global infrastructure that
none of us could build and maintain, for lack of capital, time,
resources, knowledge... What this suggests to me, then, is perhaps we
need to rethink our forms of communication....But perhaps we need to
consider something even more drastic, that being a rethinking of the
very semiotic systems we use to communicate. This is the conceit of a
more recent project of mine called _sylloge of codes_
(http://www.sylloge-of-codes.net/). ....

You continue with, So while we continue to inform on ourselves, we can
also begin to think of more poetic codes, using that underutilized and
always-under-attack faculty, the imagination.

I am intrigued with your invitation to use poetic code and imagination
to counter this new environment and can't help think also about the
new book co-authored by Galloway, Thacker and Warke, EX-COMMUNICATION
( look back to our May
2014 discussion for a more in-depth discussion of this text)  that
proposes to sever communication networks.  You seem to be inviting us
to do the opposite and am wondering if perhaps we can go back to not
only your work but also Ricardo's work from Week 1 to think about
these possibilities.  You and Claudia promised more about your
project.  Looking forward to hearing that as well.


Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,Cornell University
Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
Ithaca, NY  14853
Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <mailto:rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
URL:  http://www.renateferro.net <http://www.renateferro.net/>
      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
<http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net/>
Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net <http://www.tinkerfactory.net/>

Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/