[-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]

Shu Lea Cheang shulea at earthlink.net
Tue Jun 26 15:13:13 AEST 2018


many thanks for Virginia's garden tips..

and to Jaromil, so bitcoins failed, and the blockchain is taking over 
the art market?

Speaking of art-

a few projects that started Mycelium Network Society

RADIO MYCELIUM by Martin Howse

https://fo.am/radio_mycelium/  (a workshop at FOAM in 2011, will also be 
at STWST48x4/ARS this september)

Azucena Sanchez' Narco Cultivos that tracks Mexico's drug trafficing 
network with behavior patterns of physarum polycephalum.

http://azusnz.com/narco-cultivos/

The T-shroom project by Kartina Neiburga and Art bureau OPEN (Ilze Black)
http://open.x-i.net/tsene/index2.html

The gorgeous Spore Print Film Series by Anna Schime of Buffalo
http://www.a--a.org/project/spore-print-film-series
https://vimeo.com/85092290

Taro's Myco-Logick
https://stwst48x2.stwst.at/myco-logick

and Saša Spačal's (from Ljubljana, supported by Kapelica gallery) series 
of mycophonic works
https://mycophone.wordpress.com/mycophone_unison/

After all, MNS wants to connect local network nodes who would cultivate 
artists who work with fungal stuff....

over
sl






On 25/06/18 20:37, Shu Lea Cheang wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>
>
> ok
>
> on how mycelium/mushroom as a figure ... the mycelium cult would wants 
> to dive in and argue forever , but quickly, we quote-
>
> My mecelium network is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification 
> of a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out… all 
> my mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyper light communication 
> across space and time. - Terence McKenna, The Mushnoon speaks
>
> I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. 
> Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with 
> information-sharing membranes. …..The mycelium stays in constant 
> molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse 
> enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges. - Paul 
> Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
>
> We are stuck with the problem of living despite economic and 
> ecological ruination….. Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us 
> how to think about collaborative survival. It is time to pay attention 
> to mushroom picking. Not that this will save us— but it might open our 
> imaginations. - Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The mushroom at the end of the 
> world : on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins
>
> This answers back to [week 1] how we got started... interesting we 
> flash back to the 90s here..
>
> bring up all nodes and bolts... loosen and to be fastened...
>
> damn, and dollyoko are finger tight!!
>
> over
>
> sl
>
>
> On 25/06/18 20:06, warkk wrote:
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
>>
>> Thanks for the links, Alice. I started reading but Nick Land came up 
>> so i stopped reading immediately. I never took him to be 
>> state-of-the-art theory. Others might find the space interesting but 
>> its just not for me. Reaons given here: 
>> https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3284-on-nick-land
>>
>> Patrick is i think pointing us both back to the nineties but also 
>> forward, and i think that's a good note to hit before anyone starts 
>> getting into a nostalgic vein. I think its more about bracketing-off 
>> what networks came to be in the two consolidations of the power of 
>> what i call the vectoralist class. The first was around 2000, with 
>> the rise of corporate forms built on nothing but IP. The second came 
>> a decade later, with the commdification not just of information but 
>> also of the social network itself.
>>
>> Patrick also asks why the mushroom as a figure. I don't really 
>> understand how this part works, but it is the bit i find intriguing: 
>> that mushrooms have 36,000 genders, or something like that. Maybe Shu 
>> Lea's introduction of the mycelium into discussion will encourage me 
>> to get a layhumans' grasp on how that works. It seems just at first 
>> sight to be be an interesting thought-image of how protocols might 
>> work otherwise.
>>
>> mw
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 1:10 PM, patrick lichty <p at voyd.com 
>> <mailto:p at voyd.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>     As someone who would call himself postcybernetic rather than 
>>     postinternet,
>>     I agree with Dollyoko nd Ken.  The spaces for intereaction were
>>     highly
>>     heterogenous and diverse, and Honestly, I find the postinternet
>>     discourse
>>     relatively bland by comparison, as a lot of what it talks about
>>     is reference
>>     to postcybernetic/cyberdelic.  MOOs, MUDs, Even back to nets of
>>     online
>>     communities (Thing, Compuserve, Delphi, Fidonet, Usenet) was
>>     amazing. In
>>     many ways it seems like the corporate stacks combined with
>>     academic FOMO has
>>     created a tremendous amount of conservatism compared to the crash
>>     theory
>>     days of the Krokers.
>>
>>     In many ways, I think our era of risk aversion and its pruning of the
>>     rhizome is indicative of the relationship between culture and
>>     capital.  As
>>     art fairs and consolidating gallery culture, as well as the
>>     struggle (in my
>>     mind) to figure ourselves out more as Postmodernism fractured
>>     into the
>>     Speculative Turn, the notion of the rhizome has turned into
>>     reality bubble
>>     foam that generally swirls under megacorporate umbrellas.
>>
>>     This is why I love things like Dina Karadzic's FUBAR bunch, and
>>     Shu Lea's
>>     work the other year at the Leonore residency, but I also wonder
>>     why the
>>     notion of the mycorhizome is so strong these days as opposed to the
>>     strawberry patch (Deleuze), is it a subliminal signifier of fruit
>>     and decay
>>     and rebirth?
>>
>>     Also very interested in t-shroom discussion.
>>
>>     Love from the desert
>>     (also apologies for the typos - my current computer has a very flaky
>>     keyboard)
>>
>>
>>
>>     -----Original Message-----
>>     From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>     <mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>>     <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>     <mailto:empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>> On Behalf Of
>>     warkk
>>     Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:13 PM
>>     To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>     <mailto:empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>>
>>     Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]
>>
>>     Alan is quite right to stress how extensive the options were for
>>     online
>>     encounters in the 90s, beyond the handful i named. The larger
>>     point might
>>     still be that knowledge of any of that world is fairly thin these
>>     days.
>>     There are a few period accounts. dollyoko mentions Marshall's
>>     Living on
>>     Cybermind. Julian Dibbell wrote a book about LambdaMoo. There's a
>>     new book
>>     by Claire Evans called Broad Band that has good brief accounnts
>>     of Echo and
>>     The Word and is focused on innovations in computation by women.
>>
>>     Of course one could ask whether the linear prose form of the book
>>     is the
>>     best or even a necessary way of documenting such things. I think
>>     of the book
>>     as an instance of what dollyoko calls "successionist servers."
>>     Its hard to
>>     keep them out of Amazon, one of the biggest vectoral class
>>     enterprises of
>>     our time, but they will at least 'run' independently of that
>>     proprietary
>>     environment.
>>
>>     A book is a concentrated swarm whereas online communication tend
>>     to default
>>     to dispersed ones....
>>
>>     dollyoko has some great language for an ongoing project: secessionist
>>     servers, intentional family, open family platforms, vernacular
>>     approaches to
>>     infrastructure. (To just pick a few that i think go together with
>>     the themes
>>     Shu Lea suggested).
>>
>>     Maybe its a good thing that 90s cyberculture experiments ended up
>>     largely
>>     invisible and excluded from history, as now it might be time to
>>     be rather
>>     discreet about the possibilities uncovered then. Maybe it was a
>>     good thing
>>     for mycelium that it was largely invisible for so long, as nobody
>>     figured
>>     out how to monetize it.
>>
>>     mw
>>
>>     On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 2:16 AM, <dollyoko at thing.net
>>     <mailto:dollyoko at thing.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>     >
>>     > dear shu lea and empyreans
>>     >
>>     > yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters, deep code
>>     luscious
>>     > moon brown stem the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in
>>     > borrowed loft wiping sweat, not swiping left (write left alt
>>     write)
>>     > Floodnet!
>>     >
>>     > i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today
>>     > feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds
>>     >
>>     > 'powerful poetic gestures'
>>     > 'alternate sentiences'
>>     > 'the incomputable'
>>     > 'nature is not a system'
>>     > 'break all separations'
>>     > 'imps fuelling the real'
>>     > 'vernacular approach to infrastructure'
>>     > 't-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'
>>     > 'i have a vast genetic network in me'
>>     > 'we begin to think like a forest'
>>     >
>>     > how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age)
>>     created
>>     > in the 90s [while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media
>>     list, or
>>     > skiving off to PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down] before
>>     > other 'we(s)' were born
>>     >
>>     > Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one
>>     answer to
>>     > Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives
>>     >
>>     > i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013,
>>     prompted
>>     > by projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie
>>     > Circuits - instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and
>>     (equally
>>     > wonderful) Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure
>>     what
>>     > the mycelial potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect
>>     > there's something though...... for example, a nascent project I'm
>>     > doing with Virginia Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it
>>     starting point:
>>     >
>>     > -----------------------------------
>>     >
>>     > "A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment
>>     > (multi-user domain object-oriented), performing avatars,
>>     improvised
>>     > performance, experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the
>>     > (ethereum) blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is
>>     the
>>     > construction of intentional family beyond blood and kind.
>>     >
>>     > We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming
>>     > subjectivities to explore the production of xenofam and
>>     xenobodies,
>>     > outside of social re-production, and bring those practices to bear
>>     > upon the "real". Only a few years after the emergence of the WWW,
>>     > social networking habits were harnessed and stratified into
>>     machines
>>     > for the production of social capital and new affective forms of
>>     > extractivism within the paradigm of info-capitalism. Yet the
>>     outlier
>>     > LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small phreak family as a
>>     working
>>     > experiment, an enclave among other secessionist servers (caves,
>>     > sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out space to
>>     platform
>>     lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.
>>     >
>>     > The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0
>>     and
>>     > Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as
>>     > becoming-kin to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds
>>     through
>>     > which datablood flows. This queered approach to extensible and
>>     open
>>     > family platforms generates intentional spaces for the
>>     reconfiguration
>>     > of blood ties beyond blood types, and another mode of hexing
>>     Capital."
>>     >
>>     > --------------------
>>     >
>>     > I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait
>>     the 12
>>     > hours for the wild yeasts to do their thing.
>>     > I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way
>>     > while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we
>>     have aerials'
>>     > might take a mycelial turn
>>     >
>>     >
>>     > Warmly, to all
>>     > doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to
>>     this
>>     > conversation, tomorrow
>>     >
>>     >
>>     >
>>     > > ----------empyre- soft-skinned
>>     > > space----------------------_________________________________
>>     > ______________
>>     > > empyre forum
>>     > > empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>     <mailto:empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>>     > > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>     <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu>
>>     >
>>     >
>>     > _______________________________________________
>>     > empyre forum
>>     > empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>     <mailto:empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>>     > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>     <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu>
>>     >
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>
>>     McKenzie Wark
>>     *Professor of Media and Culture*
>>     EUGENE LANG COLLEGE
>>     65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011
>>
>>     warkk at newschool.edu <mailto:warkk at newschool.edu>
>>     <http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#
>>     <http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#>>
>>     T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     empyre forum
>>     empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>     <mailto:empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>>     http://empyre.library.cornell.edu <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> McKenzie Wark
>> *Professor of Media and Culture*
>> EUGENE LANG COLLEGE
>> 65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011
>>
>> warkk at newschool.edu 
>> <http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#>
>> T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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

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