Re: [-empyre-] NEW ART CONTEXTS

[f...@stwst.at]

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------

Hi all I want to explain why a new context is essential from the point of view of our information society. I have been dealing with our society for 45 years. I have created many utopias, but I have also lost many political battles. Especially at the end of the 70s I remember a political-social struggle, but it was also the discussion with Paul Virilio about the speed that motivated me, besides my social commitment, to deal with machines and art. It was the variables in kinetic art that fascinated me. Parameters that renew themselves autopoeotically via machines. Quickly came the real-time interchangeable video image and computer-aided interactive installations that increased speed in the sense of Virilio. But this "speed" could still be seen from the perspective of a single analog world. But the world doubled with the digital revolution. Unfortunately, artists mostly limited themselves to surfaces and lost access to their medium. Only the emerging hacker scene dealt with the media of the digital age in a relevant way. My field of work shifted to this scene. Freedom of action could only work with free software embedded in a social context. The media art groups Van Gogh TV and STWST-TV attempted this in the early 1990s. At the same time, the hacker scene built its own networks, free WIFI LANs and operating systems. 20 years have passed since then. Utopias are disappearing quickly and now it's time to get down to business. In a struggle for the supremacy of information. The present is the machine processing of information. It is the result of Claude Shannon's information theory, which put us on the wrong path. It is not a theory that takes us further in dealing with media, it is simply a technology for transmitting information. For me, an information theory would be an examination of evolution. Because life is negentropy and it developed our information. To the present day, where the analogue world is reflected in the digital world. Information has become our working material. We don't know what information is, but we work with it. That is very dangerous. I cannot blame the economy if it only wants to profit from information. However, I would like to reproach my fellow artists for working with information in an unreflected way. I see a new context in an analysis of this information. A new approach does not have to become religious or esoteric again. We must incorporate the continuity of our media criticism of the last decades into a new genuine information theory. Only through art do we have the opportunity to view information in a new and different way. The information of the sand hole is not a result of our evolution, but originates from a time before life (=information) developed on earth. We should see Virilio's speed in a new information context. Information does not come from evolution but evolution originated from information and time. Virilio: "Acceleration is the end - goal of the world.” -------- Originalnachricht -------- Betreff: Fwd: Re: [-empyre-] NEW ART CONTEXTS Von: Shu Lea Cheang An: Franz Xaver Cc: dear empyres here tanja from stadtwerkstatt. many thanks for shu lea's introduction! i am posting now a conversation between franz xaver and myself on the [loch] (the hole), which was published in STWST's newspaper versorgerin, september 2019 issue #123. (http://versorgerin.stwst.at/). It is an excerpt of a longer conversation. we understand the project idea we are talking about as a current exemplary approach for new art contexts, and for an art that remains programmatically  unfinished. the dialogue makes brief reflections: on a hole that should remain without deeper reason. and that - and moreover! - was not even dug. the text was published on the occasion of the showcase extravaganza STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED. here below now the excerpt on [loch] (hole). hope you enjoy digging the non-existent and hope to hear from your unfinished contexts. tanja EXCERPT [LOCH] Tanja Brandmayr: At the beginning of the planning of STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED we wanted to dig an actual, oversized hole - as an unfinished project. We wanted to invite as many people as possible: from STWST people to a whole scene that perhaps no longer fully understands what regular cultural activity and art production still mean in times of cutbacks and shifts to the right. We also had the idea of inviting an international Ars audience, who might have been interested in a really different program at the so-called interface of art, technology and society. Despite many efforts, it failed on the spot where this project of an oversized hole could have been possible. We have played through some approaches. Within the framework of STWST48x5 STAY UNFINISHED, two projects were actually created that resulted from these fundamental considerations - I'm only touching on it, because it can be read through in the program itself: My "Deep Drilling for Contracts" goes into the symbolic depth of the agreements, your "Sandhole" is a concave hollowed out sand hole, which finally goes up - in other words, the concave hole receives hydrogen radiation from the universe. And so back to the original idea of the hole: I like the idea of the hole as an irrational act, as geometry directed into the depths, as an unpurified silt of meaning, as an unfinished sub-project, as a zero zone in which things connect differently than on the surface. What is now a reference to the theory that I like to reflect for Quasikunst ... ... What fascinates you about this idea of a hole that remains without a deeper reason? Do we perhaps even call it the idea of an anti-negative space? Franz Xaver: By the anti-negative space you mean perhaps the "nothing" that connects Quasikunst with Infolab here. Behind this is a recurring thought: in order to create something with a sculpture, it is necessary to include the negative form, the "non-existent". First you have to create space and think the "nothing" - to get space for the "something". The surface becomes the transition, the outermost shell, the interface. It thus becomes the most important element of a sculpture. It is the slow emergence of the "nothing" that comes to meaning in the elaboration of the "hole". In the sense of "Unfinished" it is the process in which the hole is created and produces an ever-increasing "nothing". The hole must never be finished. It must be dug deeper and deeper. It is like a recurring dream. I see an incredibly huge hole in which artists stand with shovels and wheelbarrows and transport away material to create something. Why we work physically in the age of machines is still unclear to me. I see the shape of the hole as a large parabola. Because only with a parabolic shape of a hole is it possible to continue digging and transport the material on spiral-shaped paths out of the hole without any aids or supporting formwork. The fact that there is an automatic focal point in a concave hole is a side effect. In this focal point the radiation of the universe can be bundled very easily and thus the past can be brought into the present. The "nothing" in the form of a hole, or the transition, becomes a time machine. Another meta-level of an unfinished hole is the interpretation of terms. Something/nothing, inward/outward, life/death, etc. We live in fields with opposite terms. The fields are mostly very subjective and mean different things to different people. With "culture" we try to agree on the meaning of these terms. We look for common denominators. These terms become more and more objectified, which facilitates the communication between individuals. 1 and 0, the something and the nothing, are very objectified concepts. They are also the smallest unit of computer science. In order to enable machine information processing, however, as many terms as possible must be standardized. We are thus in a great upheaval of our culture resulting from the digital age. The progressive objectification of our everyday life counteracts the individual and subjective feelings of people. Unfortunately, there is very little interest in critically questioning this development. In the flood of information, personal, individual points of view no longer get through. Unfortunately, we as society as a whole do not ask ourselves whether we want this development at all. In STWST this leaves us with nothing else to do but to continue to shape the NOTHING, to dig and to hope that the hole will get bigger and bigger in order to have room for something new at some point. Zitat von Shu Lea Cheang <shu...@earthlink.net>: ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- --

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