sam =-= wrote:
> And what is wrong with being in the R&D phase of the capitalist machine.
> Strategically, its an interesting splace to be - to know how the
> interactives of the near future will work - whether choice will be 'place
> another bet' or 'pause for 10 seconds' ...
wrong?? define "wrong"! Strategically interesting perhaps, but having a
strategy suggests taking a position towards an particular objective or set of
objectives, doesn't it? that is, which are... what?
> And what is cultural development? Isn't it a special branch of
> Experimenta, Cinemedia, the OzCo and the AFC? Hand-out cultural development
> and what do you get? Sometimes some great things for of course.
Hmm, maybe that's what it's become. I've always thought that 'actual'
cultural development was something more, um, 'organic' (or like a self
organising system). But perhaps there is some validity in your assessment,
which is that (in Australia at least) government and its sponsored agencies
are conceived of to set and steer the cultural agenda, rather than reflect
ongoing cultural activity (artist, sporting, culinary, whatever...). But
whether there are 'natural' progressions or not, then these government
departments and agencies become as much part of that evolutionary machine, and
integrated in that self-organising (organic?) system. (Sorry, some of these
allusions seem a bit Darwinian! but I am also reminded of 'behaviourist'
models of cultural activity, what Morse Peckham would have broadly defined as
"artistic behaviour" which, rather than rationalising 'the world', acts to
inject an element of non-rational behaviour, a kind of chaotic impulse as
antidote to the imperatives of over-organisation).
While such reflexive humanism seem less fashionable, post-humanist remove
seems to become coupled with an extraordinary subjectivity. An interesting
example of this dichotomy is when the (much maligned) Brad Brace
simultaneously divorces himself from "rhetoric", and seems to seek to present
his work as though his own agency were not a determining factor in it's
development, as it is distributed across multiple ftp sites on the internet,
while accompanied by his own very subjective accounts of what he thinks it is
actually about!
> I';d like to ask the question: How can this 'contemporary media arts' make
> the world a better place? But maybe this is not an appropriate question.
Appropriate or not, now you've asked it there it is: a question for the
ever-expanding-present that is 'the contemporary moment'. How anything can
make the world a 'better' place, a lofty ideal, a heady and complex issue:
better for whom and for whose world, which world? It is hard (for me at least)
to conceive of a singular entity that is 'the world'. Is the conceptual
imperative to make things better not a product of enlightenment idealism,
notions of progress, or perhaps a Christian (or any other formalised religion,
philosophy or similarly political world view) return to innocence, to Eden, to
before the fall, towards salvation, putting the world to rights? But, you
know, nothing's gonna save us now (... and who is 'us'?!)
"...no longer the domain of any one group ...not possible to have a unifying
document ...different types of content leading to different ideas
...indifferent directions of futures" Indeed: passionate indifference. Well,
kicking around the idea of a "manifesto" doesn't necessarily have to mean
constriction to traditional notions, like this doesn't have to become the
digital equivalent of nailing declarations to the church door! It could just
as well be provisional, changing, open to modification and continuous
reinvention, neologistic, imaginative and downright dirty. Couldn't it?
Good night,
Steven
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hothouse: media arts discussion and action at the threshold of
technology and the 21st Century
MANIFESTO 2nd - 12th November 1999 Experimenta Media Arts
www.experimenta.org
