net.sauna log file September 10th, 1997, 12 am, Ars electronica, Linz       Lev Manovich & Tapio Mäkelä on On hyped up media: Techno and fetishism

#private_net.sauna: bather @[tee] @L16Bot *** #private_net.sauna :End of /NAMES list. *** Mode is +tnk vihta *** HHeater (HeavyHeat@195.3.80.69) has joined channel #private_net.sauna HHeater: Hello Lev, welcome to net.sauna. bather: Thank you for having me here. In Russia, we had something similar - a tradition of having endless discussions in a kitchen. HHeater: That´s nice, you know the face settings project, where there is cooking and netting involved? bather: Yes HHeater: Ok... Net.sauna is also about dialogue, and dialogic space to produce a different kind of intimate situation. bather: I was also thinking about another experience I had growing up -- taking long overnight trains which always led to long conversations with total strangers....there is something about a small enclosed space which seems to encourage intimacy and intellectual seriousness... HHeater: Yes, also what is important that people are taken away from their daily routines, time stopped, but interaction may occur. That very important factor is often missing in our media/art events. Also, a toilet is a very intimate monologic space; or space for Vygotskian inner speech... :) bather: From that point of view computer communication -- VRML worlds, mailing lists -- is it the opposite? I mean in cyberspace you don't have the sense of boundaries -- a kind of uncomfortable feeling of not knowing where the border is. It creates a particular psychological state. Yes. I remeber that I wrote my first poem when I was 12 -- it happened in the toilet. But lets move to today's topic, shall we? HHeater: There are media modes which are spectacular (VRML, WWW) and those which are more communicative... the chat boxes and palaces can be made fairly intimate... Yes, let´s move on. Our project deals very little with the visualization, very little with high-tech; as media art project our tools are accessible to anyone on the net. This leads to the idea of what I want to talk with you about during our session... How in many media art projects, the mechanical or the mathematical becomes the essence through sublimation as "new" or through aesthetization as "visually beautiful", or visually perfect. Heater sends wishes to Chris in San Diego. Chris will host a panel in ISEA, Chicago, related to this topic. We are warming up the topic here in the sauna steam, dialogically spreading to the media cool seams of communication. bather: One importnat feature of cyberculture which is relevant here in my view is the fact that in compuiter representations the mathematical data is almost always visible, it is brought up front: the number of points in VRML scene, the size of JEPG image, the connection speed. Maybe it would be good to give couple of examples of your thesis. One obvious is fractals; another is AL simulation. Is that what you have in mind? HHeater: I have labelled this elsewhere as the cult of the technical performance. That is what the computer industry is also using as a key element when commodifying difference; media art scene is unfortunately doing the very same. bather: In what way does media art do this also? HHeater: (examples) Like Simms Panspermia animations... or think about the A-life series; William Latham´s animations where "The survival of the most aesthetic" is present on the screen. There are several projects where the generation of images through algorithms, which supposedly are analogous to Artificial life or intelligence, are creators. The Algorithm has become the source of origin; in the age of copy, origin as understood earlier as the human maker, is now the algorithm; computers become mystified as animate subjects. bather: It is interesting that here at Ars Electronica we heard quite a few presentations which were united by the idea of giving primacy to a machine and displacing the human subject from its privilleged role. The idea has been around in the air for a while -- perhaps it begins with modern art which is not interested in the human being as the subject anymore; and of course witness anti-subject French philosophy of the 1960s, from Lacan to Foucault. However, what I find strange is that in these presentations the computer was still asked to create works beautiful for the human, like in the Huge Harry presentation. I.e. what would it mean to redifine "beautiful" for a computer? For instance, I once proposed that a computer would "prefer" works having best compression, thus Malevich is better for a computer than Jackson Pollock. HHeater: The replacing of the human subject by abstract representations in a discourse (be it art or technology) is a Cartesian wet dream. I think the origins go further; having the romantic ideal of the sublime artist has only sublimated the artist even further; to have more sovereign position in relation to the "audiences". Computer as the critic? On the mechanistic terms would reveal the values in evaluation today... bather: Your earlier idea of computers being mystfied as animate subjects -- does that have something to do with Marx's commodity fetishism? Hheater: Beyond Marx; since in also neomarxist theory, commodification and being a consumer are labelled as negative practices; I see it as a process which exists in every field of life. It is interesting to look at it from different angels... bather: In other words a computer becomes mystified as a subject, as opposed to being an object. This is certainly displayed here at Ars -- almost universal acceptance of the romantic idea that we need to submit ourselves to computers, recognize them as equal subjects. I missed her talk but I heard that was what Donna Haraway was putting on the table: the society of humans, animals and computers. HHeater: The technological difference; compression, more polygons, more bandwidth etc. have become determining differences instead of what a media art piece discusses or how it engages with people. Think about the change, if "social" for instance would replace the "technical" difference in the media art realm? bather: The popular idea of Memes is another example of this attempt to "take down" the human subject, to downplay its role. HHeater: Yes, and think about Stelarc, Huge Harry: they are like 14th century fart artists (no offense); but working with a non everyday life, yet simple technology which is sublimated as art. Wiring your face muscles or limbs for 4 years in the exactly same way, wow. Technical difference also becomes iconic. Memesis, Flesh Factor all deal with the (boring) Cartesian outset; as if pointing out the need for criticism, but actually constructing the discourse of split body/mind subjectivity. bather: Sometimes media artists try to resist the logic of the technological, i.e. faster and bigger is better. Right now in NYC there is show called MacClassics at the PostMasters gallery - artists created projects for Classic Macintosh computers. Here we also saw some good attempts at minimalism -- like Shulgin's "form art" project theer artists were asked to create works just made from form elements used on the WWW. This brings us to the question -- if media artists are to completely refuse the logic of the technological, what would be left of them? HHeater: For me, minimalism is not far from formalism; the technical being ridiculed, but at the same time practiced on very technoformalistic terms... another side of the same cube, so to say. The content/contextual side is very slim, even though looking at Alexei´s work as a PROJECT, how it is placed and presented with a sense of irony, it becomes quite witty, much more thant the "form art" itself. Starting point is still the computer as the conceptual and technical environment. SGI Onyxes will be tomorrows Mac Classics... *** Signoff: bather (*.NL.net *.fi) *** Signoff: L16Bot (*.NL.net *.fi) HHeater: To talk more in detail about the Cartesian outset... *** L16Bot (r2d2@L16.FI) has joined channel #private_net.sauna^Go *** Signoff: HHeater (*.se chat.bt.net) *** Signoff: [tee] (*.se chat.bt.net) *** [tee] (terhi@195.3.80.97) has joined channel #private_net.sauna^Go *** HHeater (HeavyHeat@195.3.80.69) has joined channel #private_net.sauna *** Mode change "+k vihta" on #private_net.sauna by ircd.NL.net HHeater: Hello.... bather: Yes we are back. I think I got it! By and large, contemporary art refused, for some time now, to deal with beauty and transedance. This function is now played by fashion, MTV and in general by popular audio-visual culture. But of course to have transedance through a car commercial is not ultimately the best way. So computer aesthetics -- fractals, AL simulations, etc. serve this unfulfilled need in a culture to have beauty, transedance and sublime being served by something called art. Thus we get techno-art. *** coffee (coffee@195.3.80.93) has joined channel #private_net.sauna bather: (It is also worth pointing out that according to some writers so called technological sublime has been an American phenomenon since the 19th century. Computers is another iteration of this. HHeater: Flesh Factor, Memes deal with a starting point of the self being split between the corporeal and virtual presence. However, the very fact that we start with "remember the body" is to say that "we" have forgotten it already. It is like a common mourning of the lost origin. Very funny, but so taken for granted. The discussions remain very polarized.... *** Signoff: HHeater (Connection reset by peer) [heater: our end of discussion was not logged... but chopped off.]