This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion (excerpts
from readings, outlines of issues, links to
resources, etc.). The materials are not
necessarily the same as the instructor's teaching
notes and are not designed to represent a full
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revision as the instructor finalizes preparation.
(Last revised
2/27/02
)
Preliminary Class
Business
My special office hours today, 3-4, South
Hall 2509, to discuss the LCI
"Interactive" class next time on
Neuromancer and viral art
Reading Califia and Riven
Finishing Up with
Neuromancer
My argument last time about choice, commitment,
and the "meat":
Networked identity:
individuals as nodes in a networked
whole
Postindustrial business,
knowledge work, "Biz"
Tessier vision of future
corporations
Wintermute + Neuromancer =
meta-matrix
Transcendence of the
individual: "There's others. I found one
already" (p. 270)
?
Ashpool vision of future
corporations
Turing law check on Wintermute
and Neuromancer
Anti-transcendence (inward
turning of the Straylight Villa)
(None)
?
Hacking
Minimalist, zen identity
(virus identity?)
"Dance of biz" or "art" of
biz (e.g., Hideo, Case, Molly, p.
44)
Artistic Responses to
Postindustrialism
One view of the role of art
(specifically, information art) in the
postindustrial age:
From the section on
"The Rebirth of the Modern" at the end of
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron's "The
Californian Ideology":
"As pioneers of the
new, digital artisans need to reconnect
themselves with the theory and practice of
productive art. They are not just employees of
others—or even would-be cybernetic
entrepreneurs. They are also
artist-engineers—designers of the next stage of
modernity."
cf., Modernist
avant-garde art and literature, Ezra Pound's "make
it new"
Another view of the role of art
(specifically, information art) in the
postindustrial age:
The "kung-fu"
hacker:
Case in
Neuromancer (an "artiste" of "biz" whose
art is hacking, viruses, and mental martial
arts, p. 262)
"in the 1980s there
emerges into popular culture the figure of
cyberpunk hacker. I read the cyberpunk hacker
made popular by novels like Gibson's
Neuromancer and Stephenson's Snow
Crash, as one who finds a way to participate
in the design, disruption and redirection of the
software environment, even though he or she has
been excluded from the design team."
[Not "make it new,"
but remember the ancient arts. Not "make it new"
but break it open, break it apart; cf., A
Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Yojimbo
(1961)]
The contrast between these two views of the
role of art in today's age of postindustrial
knowledge work and information technology is
symptomatic of a large uncertainty about what the
essential function of artists, creative writers,
and designers will be in the future.
The uncertainty is caused by the way the new
business appears to undermine and appropriate the
rationale for contemporary art.
Rough sketch of past rationales for art (and
literature):
What is the rationale of contemporary art and
literature? The problem is that mainstream society
in the form of postindustrial business has taken
over the "make it new" ideology. Postindustrialism
is about "creative destruction," with the emphasis
on "creativity"
and "innovation."
(The "chief
innovation officer")
One major option being explored by contemporary
art: "destructive creativity."
Destructive Creativity: The
Case of Viral or Hacker Art
(1) A precedent: 20th-century "auto-destructive
art"
from Metzger's 1965 lecture proposing
large-scale projects: "The third project I would
like to consider is in the shape of a 30 ft
cube. The shell of the cube is in steel with a
non-reflective surface. The interior of the cube
is completely packed with complex, rather
expensive, electronic equipment. This equipment
is programmed to undergo a series of breakdowns
and self-devouring activities. This goes on for
a number of years - but there is no visible
trace of this activity. It is only when the
entire interior has been wrecked that the steel
shell is pierced from within. Gradually, layer
after layer of the steel structure is
disintegrated by complex electrical, chemical
and mechanical forces. The shell bursts open in
different parts revealing the wreckage of the
internal structure through the ever changing
forms of the cube. Finally, all that remains is
a pile of rubble. This sculpture should be at a
site around which there is considerable
traffic."
(2) Contemporary digital example: Joseph
Nechvatal's Virus Art
Nechvatal's work in the 1980s:
Physical-media works that recombined and
recomposed "found" media images: "intimately
scaled graphite drawings comprising saturated,
interwoven line tracings of pictures culled from
newspapers and magazines" (Barry
Blinderman)
Conceptually destructive:"I tend to
degenerate archetypal media images," Nechvatal
said in 1984. "I rip off images from the media .
. . then destroy/transform them in the interests
of unintelligible beauty" (quoted in Carlo
McCormick).
Alluded to the general destructivity of
contemporary technologies usually feted for
their innovation and creativity. Nechvatal:
"Images of mass annihilation wrought by
technology now provide the major context for our
art and our lives. With profoundly disturbed
psyches, modern people encounter their
existential fear in the atom, for when
technology relieved much of man's fear of nature
it replaced that fear with one of technology
itself" (quoted in Frank Popper).
>Do you see electronic
media as obscuring communication? jodi
yes/no ill.communication is ok ,makes good
noise ^$%&$%^$%^$^&*&$%$&^(&$^247 (Mark
Napier, interview with Jodi; quoted in Sandra
Fauconnier)
Information art is "hackerly"
"When a viewer looks at our
work, we are inside his computer. There is this
hacker slogan: "We love your computer." We also
get inside people's computers. And we are
honored to be in somebody's computer. You are
very close to a person when you are on his
desktop. I think the computer is a device to get
into someone's mind. We replace this
mythological notion of a virtual society on the
net or whatever with our own work. We put our
own personality there." (Baumgärtel, " 'We love
your computer' ")
(4) Beyond Auto-Destructive Art: Critical Art
Ensemble
from "Electronic Civil
Disobedience":
"The strategy and tactics of
ECD should not be a mystery to any activists.
They are the same as traditional CD. ECD is a
nonviolent activity by its very nature, since
the oppositional forces never physically
confront one another. As in CD, the primary
tactics in ECD are trespass and blockage. Exits,
entrances, conduits, and other key spaces must
be occupied by the contestational force
in order to bring pressure on legitimized
institutions engaged in unethical or criminal
actions. Blocking information conduits is
analogous to blocking physical locations;
however, electronic blockage can cause financial
stress that physical blockage cannot, and it can
be used beyond the local level. ECD is CD
reinvigorated. What CD once was, ECD is
now.
Activists must
remember that ECD can easily be abused. The
sites for disturbance must be carefully
selected."
Gustav
Metzger (site includes texts of his
"Earth to Galaxies: On Destruction and
Destructivity," "Manifesto Auto-Destructive
Art," "Auto Destructive Art - Machine Art - Auto
Creative Art," Entartete Kunst, retrieved 17
Jan. 2001
