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I am curious to know what would happen if art were seen for what it is, namely, exact information for how to rearrange one’s psyche in order to anticipate the
next blow from our own extended faculties
- Marshal McLuhan
today’s lecture emphasizes the conceptual:
units of knowledge that engage at the level of cultural meaning and imagination
let’s think about technology and art, viruses and antibodies, cultural assumptions and challenges to those assumptions....
technology can be understood as an extension of our human selves, but also as something that can self replicate (code = dna), and might even be interested in it’s own survival.
understanding technology beyond hardware:
*techniques*, crafts, methods, tools employed to achieve an objective.
techne τέχνη [tékʰnɛː] + logia λογία = ‘skill or craft’ + ‘study of’
Perhaps ... it is not technology per se that is a virus but the technological concepts,
conscious or unconscious.
- Joline Blais & Jon Ippolito
memes:
mimine mimēma [míːmɛːma]
information that is copied. that which can be replicated from person to person.
A term coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to suggest an idea that propagates through culture the way genes propagate through a biological population.
memes:
cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that are copied.
through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena
technology + memes = temes
technology is “not simply tools and codes,” but the concepts and metaphors, methods and techniques that develop and grow with them.
art as antibody: our authors propose that IF technology were a virus,THEN digital art could be an antibody.
antibody:
a protein on the surface of the human immune cell designed to detect a foreign agent such as a virus or bacterium.
according to Blais & Ippolito, antibodies have six main functions:
perversion
arrest
revelation
execution
recognition *
perserverance *
digital art has many converging lineages.
US military & CIA
cybernetics, systems theory
marxist philosophy
20th-c avant gardist art
electronic music
industry
1960s hippie culture
:: Walter Benjamin ::(Marxist philosopher1982 - 1940), The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
When an artwork becomes reproducible, it loses its authenticity in time and space.
- the “aura” dissolves.
- authenticity becomes less important
- the value of reproducible art moves from a “cult value” to “exhibition value”
... the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic
production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it
begins to be based on another practice—politics.
-- Walter Benjamin
art enters into the political sphere because there is more of it; it is easier to produce, reproduce, and distribute.
... and it is not as beholden to market forces.
20th-century avant garde
futurism 1909-1916
dada 1916-1922
bauhaus 1919-1933
surrealism 1920s
situationists 1957 +
fluxus 1960s +
case study:
jodi (jodi.org - load at your own risk!)
world wide wrong exhibit
challenge conventions of graphical user interface, or GUI:
GUI creates the illusion of user control, but who really has control?
jodi investigates the computer, the web browser, and video games
case study:
Natalie Jeremijenko:
Environmental Health Clinic
health of self = healthy environment
OOZ
please touch the animals!
Urban Space Station
climate crisis = a crisis of agency
I am curious to know what would happen if art were seen for what it is, namely, exact information for how to rearrange one’s psyche in order to anticipate the
next blow from our own extended faculties
- Marshal McLuhan
