Hiya,
It's a bit hard to keep up with all the threads here.
So hello Rob, Edward, Alan, Pall, Gretta, and all,
On 31/10/17 17:45, Rob Myers wrote:
On which subject this is a very interesting book -
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/on-the-existence-of-digital-objects
"On the Existence of Digital Objects", 2016 • Author: Yuk Hui "Hui’s
work develops an original, productive way of thinking about the data
and metadata that increasingly define our world."
Thanks for the reminder to look in those strange places where all the
"real" action is taking place :/
MIT has a "Center for Bits and Atoms". Information requires a
substrate and will not outlive the heat death of the universe. There's
a degree of "so what?" to this - while there is energy left in the
universe we can move information to another substrate. Digital
information doesn't care what its substrate is. Which makes substrates
sad. But information does care that it has a substrate. There's a
degree of nervousness to information's nonchalance about this. That's
why it has to exist in three places at once...
Okay, playing along with this OOO based exchange (which feels pretty
risky - and generally not to be encouraged;) surely digital information
does care about its substrate - at least for its conductive, resistive
qualities and for its longevity and portability to human and social systems.
Whenever I hear "Center for Bits and Atoms" I always want to imagine a
"Center for Bits and Atoms and Pennies", which adds the problem of
paying for all that substrate to the mix.
Yes, and this is what I was trying to get at with my vulgar quotes that
insist on accounting for money. I wonder if my long-standing artistic
urge to assert the autonomy of art (free from the money substrate)
connects with a wider tendency to wish for autonomy (a lack of
accounting) from the environmental substrate.
I especially like Julian Oliver’s Harvest
<https://julianoliver.com/output/harvest>and Max Dovey's Respiration
<http://maxdovey.com/?page=Blog&id=financial-respiration-> both new
blockchain artworks for tying together art, wind/breath, electricity,
money and ethics.
This is also something that Gretta has given a lot of attention to in
her brilliant work with /Networking the Unseen/ - remembering that
digital networks have physical (and political) infrastructures
But that would be even meaner than reminding bits that they are tied
to atoms (or their components) and, well, information just wants to be
free*...
Hah! Please can someone write a history of the trouble caused, as the
network society emerges, by the double meaning of the word "free"
On Sun, 29 Oct 2017, at 04:59 AM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
Thanks, and exactly; we've got to consider the ontology of the
digital, an issue which has been a problem for people for decades;
it's tied to issues of reproducibility, originality, equivalence,
etc. - Best, Alan On Sat, 28 Oct 2017, Pall Thayer via NetBehaviour
wrote:
This is a great read. Now I want someone to explain to me how a
non-material (non-existent) work of art maintains its immateriality
(its non-existence) despite a record in the blockchain. Personally,
I think we have to start admitting to ourselves that digital
existence is material. Especially if its existence is recorded
within a distributed network. It exists. We may not be able to
cradle it in our hands but its existence is broadly verifiable.
Doesn't that change things? On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 10:32 PM Alan
Sondheim <[email protected]> wrote: The following (which may be
difficult to follow in ascii?) is a discussion between Ruth and
myself; Ruth asked that I send to the list. Oddly, given ascii, it's
not clear that I wrote first (in response in response etc.) - the
"Hi Ruth, I'll intersperse some comments, and thank you so much for
writing back and so much to think about! We're still away, staying
for an extra day (next Sunday) and trying to decompress..." is mine
- On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 10:32 AM, ruth catlow
<[email protected]> wrote: ? ? ?Dear Alan, ? ? ?Ihesitate
to bring up issues here which themselves are problematic, but here
goes. ? ? ?Ifor one am very appreciative of your thoughts here. I am
preparing for our first DAOWO workshop on Thursday and this is very
very helpful.
http://www.daowo.org/#reinventing-the-art-lab-on-the-blockchain This
is really fascinating! I do find a problem with "Does Art need its
own blockchain?" - "art" needs nothing (can't get rid of the
italics, apologies); perhaps people do, but then which people? and
what arts? ? ? ?First, to the extent that art is a Foucauldian
discursive formation (at least as I taught it at RISD in the 70s),
labor, in the form of reading/
writing/conversation/declamation/discourse is involved. ? ? ?With
blockchain art the financial formulation of the work - its price,
its relationship to, and operation within the markets over time -
becomes another element of its expressive form/ part of the
discourse. I think this held with a lot of conceptual art as well,
what artists were on about around the time of Piper/Siegelaub texts.
? ? ?Second, at least again at that point, there was a tendency to
associate the value of a work in relation to the labor necessary to
produce it; in other words, an artist would be paid according to the
labor she put into the creation of a work, real or invisible,
substantial or insubstantial. ? ? ?(I remember Adrian Piper talking
with us about this, but I may be mistaken; this was early in her
career.) ? ? ?Artistic labour is still discussed in this way by
public funders, and publicly funded arts organisations in the UK I
think there might be a difference, not sure. In the States, it was a
form of identification with manual labor, that one should be paid
for what one does. This attempted even then to break the
inflationary spiral which is now of course out of control. ? ?
?Other than that I dont see how this can possibly still hold true
(if it ever did). The financial value of an artwork by an art star
hardly correlates to either the effort or time invested in its
production. Unless we are talking about more craft-oriented work.
The idea was a form of levelling in relation to art-stardom. Anyone
who was on the way to success, I think, ran from the idea. ? ? ?Im
not sure at exactly what point in history this occurred or whether
it was always thus. Or whether being (barely) remunerated for
'labour' has just become a way to keep all artworkers on the bread
line. In the States, artists are always statistically on the
breadline; maybe 1% can support themselves by their work. Paying for
labour means payment for all cultural workers. It never took hold of
course. - ? ? ?And third, there was within conceptual a discourse of
the invisible or non-existent work, vide for example Lucy Lippard's
The Dematerialization book. ? ? ?There was of course a heavy
critique from Haacke and others of the commercialization of art
(also of course in music, tv (Radical Software) etc.). ? ? ?Ilove a
lot of Haackes work and also of the Radical Software group. But they
were successful in generating cultural capital for themselves -
through their expressive disdain for the commercialization of art.
For me that doesn't invalidate the work at all; I never expect
purity of intent and production from anyone to be honest. I think
even Barbara Kruger (who I really loved) made some money from her
work. And with all of these people, there were long periods at the
beginning when they made little or nothing. For that matter the
Guerilla Girls aren't wealthy after all these years (I know one of
them) . - ? ? ?Ikeep thinking about the hundreds of young artists
and art students that I meet in London who are attempting to make
meaningful work and to pull themselves up into a decent world (and
artworld) by their bootstraps. Should they work, as Annie suggested,
from their sense of personal quest - perhaps it's none of my
business, but I have been questioning my own sense of how we can
proceed in relation to THESE QUOTES HERE ? ? ?Like Western
civilisation, autonomous art? an art that is not a means to an end,
not instrumental - would be a really nice idea If art is an
alternative currency, its circulation also outlines an operational
infrastructure. Could these structures be repossessed to work
differently? - Hito Steyerl talking about Duty Free Art
https://tankmagazine.com/issue-72/talk/hito-steyerl/ ? ? ?"Noble
people don't do things for the money they simply have money and
that's what allows them to be noble. They sprout benevolent acts
like they sprout trees" - from Hagseed by Margaret Atwood ? ? ?"It
was hard to identify with the characters. They live in an economic
vacuum. They make decisions cos they are in love, or they are angry
or they want adventure. You don't know how they afford their houses,
they never decide not to do something because it costs too much. You
never find out how much these characters pay in taxes." Willing, on
literature pre-financial-crash in The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047
by Lionel Shriver The artworld now is very very different from
Atwood, traditional artschools, etc.; everything was changed of
course by the digital 'revolution' which we hardly understand. What
bothers me about the quotes is all of them are based in economics;
where would for example Carolee Schneeman fit into this? Where is a
resistance to capital? With blockchain it has to be capital
resisting capital which for a lot of people is already tarnishing, a
capitulation. I've been thinking about Kathy Acker recently because
of the biography which came out and the video we did together; it's
becoming an underground 'hit' and I think two interconnected reasons
are that it's based on the body and the confrontation with the body,
which isn't prettified, and also because it's fundamentally feminist
thanks to Kathy (in a documentary made about her, young girls even
now talk about their identification with her). I think work liked
this would either have to be economically "valued" or locked out of
blockchain... I may be way mistaken about all of this, but it seems
to me this is why a critique of blockchain within blockchain - a
fundamental critique - is so necessary. I think of comfortable Marx
in the British Library, writing from within, muddying the capitalist
waters, producing brilliant analysis at the time (although even he
couldn't see the coming digital revolution of course). ? ? ?So the
value of the non-existent work here might well be based on the
discourse; one can imagine a work which is not being discussed to
blockchained, which no one knows about, possessing a labor value
close to the null set itself. ? ? ?Iwasnt going to tell you but I
have made a trillion of these artworks ;) That's interesting! That's
also critique right there, that reproducibility of certain kinds of
works, conceptualized works, can self-deflate economically! I love
this; on the other hand I also love the Isenheim Altarpiece, no
matter what it's economic value is; it disturbs me in a way that
invades me, maybe the difference between Godel's work and his
platonism which still found substance outside the matrix of his
analysis. ? ? ?For me, what's new in the work being discussed here
is its relation to blockchain, and this places it within economic
strata and habitus that makes me uncomfortable. Not that that
matters at all, but the point is the embracing of invisibility and
non-existence in relation to blockchain and (economic) value,
doesn't this also relate problematically to neoliberalism? If one is
going to work in this direction, is it worthwhile to consider
breaking the chains of blockchain (in a way somewhat related to
breaking the chains of the male domination of the artworld, vide
Guerilla Girls etc.)? ? ? ? I think we are now in a very different
moment. I am currently entertaining the idea that the tactics and
techniques for breaking chains may need evolve to incorporate more
critical finance-play and experimentation. Yes! ? ? ?Iparticularly
like the invisibility form, less because of its eschewal of value
associated with art objects, but more because it rhymes with the
invisibility of the electromagnetic waves, currents and fields
through which our digital exchanges are taking place. Then you have
to look at Barry, who did precisely that, I think. But of course
waves/current/fields are also commensurate, not only with particles,
but also with the constituents, 'things,' of the universe. I've
worked a lot with VLF radio, very low frequency radio, and those
things are out there!
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