[-empyre-] old media cycles to new: Signal Culture and Jason Bernagozzi

[B. Bogart]

Hello Renata, see my comments below...

Renate Terese Ferro wrote:
> That said the idea or the concept usually comes first, however I
> find working through with materials helps me to develop the
> conceptual premise.  The making and the thinking are in tandem. Then
> as the tension between the making and the theoretical develops there
> is a criticality that ensues.  That criticality helps me to figure
> out if there are political or social consequences in the work.

I think there is something interesting in the sense of concept/form as
independent domains where one could exist without the other. This seems
congruent with mind/body dualism.

I like the idea that concept (mental simulations inspired by the world)
and form (realizations of concepts manifest in the world) interact to
structure a reinforcing pattern that is not reducible to either in
isolation. A concept that perfectly reproduces reality is objective and
global, lacking a relation to context and agency. A concept that is
imposed on reality is subjective and local, lacking a relation to
reality and culture.

Making (and any cultural interaction, including writing, conversing,
reading, etc.) gives us the opportunity to escape from our solipsism and
see the manifestation of our ideas as independent of us. When I write of
the Dreaming Machine not generating "a perfect illusionary
representation of the world", I mean the system's "concepts" are not
mirror copies of external stimuli that are objective. When I write that
the Dreaming Machine does not "project a prescribed structure into the
world", I mean that its "concepts" are not totally subjective, private
and unrelated to external stimulus.

We make reality, and reality remakes us.
Reality makes us, and we remake reality.

Ben