Are you a digital native, a digital immigrant or an analogue?

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Computers are existentialists - computing beyond the pleasure principle

I still think some people are missing my point.

Articulating things in terms of existing human 'needs' - there are of course no human needs of any kind, the whole notion of need is ideological through and through - immediately massively limits the potential of any technology, especially computers, which in being Nothing - in having no essence - can potentially be anything.

The idea that there is a more 'complex and nuanced' view of computers than that they are simulation machines is really quite stunning. What could be more complex and nuanced than the idea of a machine that can simulate the function of any other machine but which itself is Nothing? (Sadly think that using the magic word 'Baudrillard' has closed down thought here -- because aha, we all know what Baudrillard says, don't we, and it's not very interesting :) ). The idea of computers as simulators is really not at all controversial, and certainly not reducible to Baudrillard (who in any case is a master of the subtle and the nuanced, whatever reductive readings of him maintain). Much of Sadie Plant's stuff in the nineties, in which she parallels computers with women, both of which have been defined as nothing but simulation, lacking in any essence, makes good use of this idea that computers are simulation machines.

No, I haven't used Linux, but then I'm lazy and I don't really want to defend such laziness. My default position would be argue that yes Macs are superior etc etc, but this is to avoid the broader and more crucial techopolitical point about potentials. 'User friendliness' basically slaves computers into the human pleasure principle, to - if we pursue Sadie's parallel - becoming prostitutes, dressing up in familiar garb to service the same old dreary desires. 'All I wanted to do was watch the movie': well, yes, precisely. But there are more destratifying potentials that human-computer interaction could explore --- once both use value and the pleasure principle are left behind.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
OSS watch

Link for those interested in open source (especially in relation to education):

<a href=http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk> Oxford University's Open Source watch </a>

As I mentioned on another thread, I met the fellow involved with this the other week; he's a real Stephensonian k-punk geek, totally inspiring in his no-nonsense, can-do anti-mystagogic approach....
 

Mika

Active member
I guess, like most people, when I read 'simulation', I think of Baudrillard - whose writing in many ways presents a deeply cynical and pessimistic take on popular media. Not a particularly helpful one either, for the most part.

But in terms of a more nuanced reading, I'm even thinking of stuff like Kittler in Gramophone, Film, Typewriter - whose comparably bleak posthumanist perspective is based on, I believe, a more useful notion of data-processing in the post-Gutenberg universe. Particularly, the notion of technological media as bypassing symbolic mediation to record visual and acoustic effects of the real (i.e. the Lacanian slant of the text), seperating out the senses and fragmenting the subject. Which I find is a more illuminating take on the experience of technology in terms of recording devices, keyboards, strobe-lighting, visual FX, etc. But also notions of time and death, etc.

Of course, then he goes on to suggest that as we enter the post-medium era; as formerly distinct media like television, radio, telephone and mail begin to converge in the computer; the collected bits of the subject are remade technologically so that - "instead of wiring people and technologies; absolute knowledge will run as an endless loop". Naturally, whether we'll ever reach this stage of artificial intelligence is highly questionable.

I guess that Lev Manovich is someone else who I find is equally useful in capturing the current process of new media as evolutionary, and gauging these emerging technologies against the history/influence of cinema. In this account, computer mediated technology is not a blank 'Nothing' - but is a processor continually tied to RL, and born from the genealogies and historical trajectories of film.

And also, the work of Mark Hansen, whose critique of Kittler and posthumanism/poststructuralism is particularly innovative in reconceptualizing embodiment and new media in terms of haptic vision, affect, and endogeous bodily framing processes through re-readings of Bergson, Deleuze and the neurobiology of Francisco Varela.

Maybe I'm just not really getting what you mean by a computer philosophically being defined as 'Nothing'? For instance, what I think is interesting/unique about these writers is the attempt to historically contextualize the emergence of computer technology, connect it with other media and frame it in terms of RL. While I guess hypothetically computers could be 'anything' or a 'void', in this literature the evolution of new media appears as quite a distinct object - historical, contextual and physical.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
paul said:
Those pictures really are revolting Mr. Woebot!

I think you mistake what an artist's role is. It's never about the materials my friend! Unless you really think there's such a thing as 'process art'. Ha ha ha! Obviously, people with a lot of time on their hands will do all kinds of things, but who wants to look at 'em?

er, thats actually what i say in the post if you took the time to read it. its difficult to tell from your remark whether you're in agreement, or just haven't taken this on board. maybe you're just trolling as usual?!?
 
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xero

was minusone
WOEBOT said:
When you delve deep into motion graphics there are juntures when you enter into the software's "shell". Most of the time (certainly in 2d graphics) there's no cause to start tinkering with code. But the 3d package Maya has it's own scripting language called MEL, which is extremely useful when you are unable to get the software to perform how you want it to (or want to automate stuff). Indeed the deeper you go into motion graphics, for instance in formidable software like Houdini and Shake which adopt user-defined procedures as the algorithms defining motion, you'll find that coding is central to the program's operation.

Apparently at Pixar, Maya is thought of as an operating system rather than an application - it has enormous flexibility. But flexibility can be the enemy of artistry - especially on an individual level ie when you don't have a a vast hierachy of technical operators performing specialised functions like they do at pixar. It's possible to draw a parallel with audio synthesis: huge modular synthesisers have the potential to create a massive variety of sounds but huge creative leaps have been made with hardwired little roland boxes with a minimum number of knobs. Art becomes interesting when there is a critical or emotional response to the technology rather than just exploring what it can do
 

johneffay

Well-known member
k-punk said:
It depends whether computers are deployed as tools of Human OS or as escape routes from it.

Can you elaborate on exactly how you think computers can be deployed in this way?

I get the feeling that all this antipathy towards GUIs, etc. is rather missing the point: It is the GUI that allows most people to do anything at all on a computer (including most LINUX users). I guess your point is that they are not doing what you think they should be on computers, but I don't understand what it is that you think they should be doing.

I actually agree with Echo-Friendly :eek: about the question of levels of complexity: I'm digital native enough to have spent the best part of a decade in the data comms industry, speccing and managing wide area networks for a company which used to manufacture and maintain them. The software engineers worked on raw UNIX code and made the same disparaging noises about DOS that you are making about GUIs, but they still didn't know how the hardware worked; that was what the hardware engineers were for. In fact, all the engineers had their own specialisations, and none of them could have built an entire WAN.

Now you might want to argue that this is because the stuff is ridiculously overcomplicated, but I would suggest that if you simplify down to a level where everybody has full user transparency, we will be back to paper and pencil. Come to think of it though, just how do they get the lead into a pencil? ;)
 

Woebot

Well-known member
minusone said:
But flexibility can be the enemy of artistry - especially on an individual level ie when you don't have a a vast hierachy of technical operators performing specialised functions like they do at pixar.

Yes, and it's so rarely important (for me at least!) to delve that far under the hood. Did Leonardo make his own paint? (Not that I'm suggesting there is anything particularly important about the works I produce in my own small capacity)

Still, I'm very interested to hear what Mark will make of effay's point. That's to say "What could these machines be liberated from the GUI to do?" I've a feeling he's gonna say something along the lines of "We'll never know until we abandon it!" Lol.
 

xero

was minusone
WOEBOT said:
Did Leonardo make his own paint?

with out wanting to undermine the point here by being a pedant - i've a feeling he did! although no doubt assistants did the legwork -I think it was quite common for painters until relatively recently (someone help me out here) to mix up paint from separate pigments, binders etc.
 

xero

was minusone
warhol used the cheapest naffest paints imaginable - from a hardware store or the kind of powder paints you used to get at primary school - I found this out because someone I know put his foot through a warhol painting whilst moving saatchi's collection around and the expert restorer who patched it up told him & that's the kind of paint he used to match it in. This was unfortunately an accident not an act of postmodern iconoclasm, before you ask...
 

polystyle

Well-known member
All three ...

Nice thread K
much more interesting then the whole W Gibson site by now ...

relative of Cossack barbarians ,
father worked in Pentagon on the Monet (MoNet ?),
Futants jammed with Robin Simon '79,
called Gibson in '84 , setting relationship in motion ("Hip Tech High Lit" '87 w/ WG, Bruce Sterling, Judy Nylon, Sean Young ; Original music for "Neuromancer" Audio Book '94 ; same for "Johnny Mnemonic" , yeah, i know it sucked, we got bought out by Sony before the movie was even done),
tried cobbling together software mod's for OS site in '97,
got bored with tech,
went to Himalayas

Valhalla , we are coming
 
B

be.jazz

Guest
minusone said:
with out wanting to undermine the point here by being a pedant - i've a feeling he did! although no doubt assistants did the legwork -I think it was quite common for painters until relatively recently (someone help me out here) to mix up paint from separate pigments, binders etc.
I caught a BBC documentary on Da Vinci (or was it Michaelangelo?) some weeks ago and (whoever old Italian it was about) innovated in the making of paint.
 

mms

sometimes
be.jazz said:
I caught a BBC documentary on Da Vinci (or was it Michaelangelo?) some weeks ago and (whoever old Italian it was about) innovated in the making of paint.

on a tangent it's almost a given that most of the brit art artists of the 90's use the factory methods of warhol etc, it makes me kinda sad, talented artists making "to order " artworks made out of dead flies in a warehouse in Stroud for damien hurst's rich clients.

can any "artistry " come out of this method of making things, not sure if it can, just a stinking menagerie of dead flies ready to be gassed and stuck to a canvas.
have any of the brit pop artists perpetuated this state of "artistry" into anything useful and viable?
 
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