[-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

Sun Nov 20 13:26:05 AEDT 2016

Ana, is that its science "fiction"? :)

Murat

On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 7:53 PM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> I am an old fan of science fiction and I am still in love with masters as
> Philip K Dick Sturgeon and Ursula Le Guin. They wrote about dystopian
> realities not far from ours. Sturgeon wrote about a gestalt a kind of
> complex unity composed by kids with extra sensorial abilities I don't want
> to call it "powers" to avoid any link to Marvels hyped heroes.
> And Ursula Le Guin, an anarchist, challenged the whole idea of an
> antrhopomorfic God.
> Science needs a narrative to prevail.
> Ana
>
> Skickat från min iPad
>
> > 19 nov. 2016 kl. 21:34 skrev Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>:
> >
> > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> > "... "we're mostly unaware of how deeply our lives depend upon
> > the functioning of complex, expert systems..." -- we're the fish in
> > their ocean (McLuhan) (unless they break down). ..."
> >
> > That's why a digital art critiquing its own medium must involve, one
> > way or another, a break down of its system. It must have an ethos of
> > inefficiency or failure at its center-- not an expression of power,
> > but weakness-- maybe an elusive glitch that the reader may experience
> > subliminally or a software that decrease communication rather than
> > improving it, etc., etc.
> >
> > "...I am not sure whether the "digital" can speak its truth (at least in
> a
> > language we understand), but Shaviro suggests one way we humans might
> > begin to see its truth/reality for ourselves - by creating art where
> > the "material and technological factors are explicitly foregrounded...."
> >
> > I do not agree with this part of the argument. Most often, this kind
> > of work is celebratory, of "look what I'm doing, ma" kind  (I hope
> > people will jump up and show the error of my way). It suggests that
> > the technology is revealing something about us when in actually the
> > work is mimicking, promoting the reality the technology is imposing.
> >
> > I think all great science fiction is dystopian. And I am a great fan
> > and believer in it as a modern relevant form of expression. My
> > previous poem The Spiritual Life of Replicants is actually a science
> > fiction work. At this moment, Peter Valente's reference to Melies's
> > silent masterpiece A Voyage to the Moon comes to my mind. On first go,
> > it seems to be a science fiction work that is celebrating the future.
> > So far so good... But the film is so full of domestic details and the
> > space ship the "space men" are traveling on is so ramshackle that one
> > gradually realizes that the people are transporting their bourgeois,
> > middle class life to the moon, that the movie is a magical, exquisite
> > piece of satire.
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Murat
> >
> >
> >> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala502 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >> Murat, your question, as to whether "the computer (and the web and its
> >> consequence) has the ability to expose and criticize the condition it
> >> has created...whether the digital can be 'revealer of is own truth',
> >> brought to mind a book I've been reading - Discognition, by Steven
> >> Shaviro. One of the points Shaviro argues is that, in our everyday
> >> experience, "we're mostly unaware of how deeply our lives depend upon
> >> the functioning of complex, expert systems..." -- we're the fish in
> >> their ocean (McLuhan) (unless they break down). Another aspect we
> >> don't grasp, as your question implies, is that such technological
> >> entities, rather then just being there, inert until we manipulate
> >> them, have an agency of their own: "...if we engineer them, in various
> >> ways, they 'engineer' us as well, nudging us to adapt to their
> >> demands."
> >>
> >> I am not sure whether the "digital" can speak its truth (at least in a
> >> language we understand), but Shaviro suggests one way we humans might
> >> begin to see its truth/reality for ourselves - by creating art where
> >> the "material and technological factors are explicitly foregrounded."
> >> His book is about science fiction stories that do this. Perhaps this
> >> is also what I had in mind by the poetic project I wrote about, which
> >> foregrounds digital/corporate cliches that inform us, through the
> >> jargon we speak. In any case, Shaviro's book may offer a clue as to
> >> the great popularity of the SF genre. Often, in allegorical ways, it
> >> acknowledges the agency of the technological (remember the Borg?), and
> >> enables people to start talking about the power of its influence.
> >>
> >>> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 3:15 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <muratnn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >>> Hi Jerome, by your question on the nature of "knowing" in poetry, I
> >>> think you touched a critical point, an issue running throughout the
> >>> discussions and presentations this month.
> >>>
> >>> Knowledge that poetic experience contains or "reveals" does have
> >>> multiple facets. On the one hand, the knowledge (in some incarnations,
> >>> message/propaganda) may be transactional and implicitly points or
> >>> leads to action. Some great classics are of that sort, for instance,
> >>> Lucretius's On Nature or Virgil's Eclogues, Shakespeare's Henry V and
> >>> also, in some sense, though a book of "revelation," The Bible, etc.
> >>> The election of Trump last week drove the discussion to the
> >>> transactional side of poetry (art), and rightly so. That is what all
> >>> the writing invited to be sent to Dispatches for the anthology all
> >>> about. So are the post cards Craig refers to, as conceptual acts.
> >>>
> >>> There is another kind of knowledge that poetry "reveals," not
> >>> necessarily leading to action-- of course, the distinction is somewhat
> >>> artificial since a poem or work of art contains both simultaneously
> >>> each time creating a different balance. If one extreme side of this
> >>> spectrum is propaganda (all nations/cultures/languages have propaganda
> >>> masterpieces), the other extreme is gnosis-- a knowledge not quite
> >>> contained in the practicalities of a language, but in its peripheries,
> >>> the often unacknowledged overtones that emanate from words, space,
> >>> etc. (embedded in poesies).
> >>>
> >>> It is in terms of this same dilemma (the nature of poetic knowledge)
> >>> that Heidegger is discussing technology in his essay. On the one hand
> >>> it is defined as "enframing" nature to exploit it (in terms that
> >>> Francis Bacon asserts as "knowledge is power"). On the other hand, it
> >>> returns technology to its roots as techne, a making that reveals the
> >>> truth. Their relationship is dialectical.
> >>>
> >>> I have been on Empyre list for about two years, following it on and
> >>> off with interest because it presents to me a digital culture that is
> >>> of great interest to me; but in which I am not directly involved as a
> >>> practitioner. What struck me most is that, save for important
> >>> exceptions such as Alan Sondheim and Isak Berbic (and I am sure there
> >>> are others), the focus of the participants was on what the internet or
> >>> the computer can do for them, on the computer as a new potent enabler,
> >>> the computer as artistic or political power. As far as I can see,
> >>> little attention was given to it as a revealer of "truth," the
> >>> knowledge of human condition and psyche in a digital technological
> >>> age.
> >>>
> >>> In my view, poetry (art) is doomed to die without containing within
> >>> itself both these knowledge, though the melange may be different in
> >>> each.
> >>>
> >>> The underlying focus for me this month has been, that is why I
> >>> accepted the invitation to moderate, to explore whether the computer
> >>> (and the web as its consequence) has the ability to expose and
> >>> criticize the condition it has created, in other words, whether the
> >>> digital can be the "revealer of its own truth." I can not say I have
> >>> been that successful up to now.
> >>>
> >>> The primary text for this month is the fifteen minute video clip I
> >>> referred to in my introductory statement at the beginning of the month
> >>> in which the film maker Jean Renoir discusses the effect of technology
> >>> on art (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Mtd6GE_PI ). He says that
> >>> art becomes boring to the extent that that the art maker is in total
> >>> control of his or her own materials and techniques. He refers to a
> >>> group of 11th century French tapestries (the Bayeux, the first known
> >>> ones) where the threads were coarsely spun, the colors were primitive
> >>> and of a narrow range; but they contained great beauty, revealing the
> >>> strife of their making.
> >>>
> >>> That is why "Overcoming Technique"--the first two words of my
> >>> introductory title-- is crucial, whether one finally agrees with
> >>> Renoir or not. In our daily lives with family and children and
> >>> teaching and grading papers, etc., I hope some of us find time to
> >>> re-focus on these issues the remaining days of this month. As artists,
> >>> the issues are important for all of us.
> >>>
> >>> Ciao,
> >>> Murat
> >>>
> >>>> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Craig Saper <csaper at umbc.edu> wrote:
> >>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> >>>> Relevant to the discussion and the “dispatches” this event might
> speak to the issue of, what Jerome Sala called in a recent "poetry is a
> particular way of knowing the mind” …
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> "Post Card Avalanche"
> >>>>
> >>>> Join in and send a postcard directly to Trump! Here are the basic
> instructions to participate:
> >>>>
> >>>> ** IMPORTANT - Don't mail your card until NOV. 26th **
> >>>>
> >>>> In the message section, write this simple message: NOT BANNON!
> >>>>
> >>>> Throw a post card Avalanche party. Make postcards.
> >>>>
> >>>> Address it as follows:
> >>>>
> >>>> Donald Trump
> >>>> c/o The Trump Organization
> >>>> 725 Fifth Avenue
> >>>> New York, NY 10022
> >>>>
> >>>> Affix a stamp - you can use a 35 cent postcard stamp, or a normal
> letter stamp.
> >>>>
> >>>> Take a picture of your postcard that you can share on social media
> using the hashtag #stopbannon
> >>>>
> >>>> Drop it in the mail! We are aiming to get these mailed between
> Saturday, Nov 26th and Monday, Nov. 28th to create a concentrated avalanche
> of postcards.”
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> empyre forum
> >>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> >>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> empyre forum
> >>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> >>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> empyre forum
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> >> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
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> > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> _______________________________________________
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