On Tue, 31 Oct 2017, at 07:32 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote: > On Tue, 31 Oct 2017, Rob Myers wrote: > > On Fri, 27 Oct 2017, at 08:13 PM, 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. > > > > Immateriality and inexistence are different matters. :-) > > > > Registering something in the blockchain doesn't anchor its being or cause it > > to come into existence unless we agree it does or we have some way of > > evaluating that existence - > > > > http://robmyers.org/proof-of-existence/ > > > Does being need anchoring, or substantiation?
Outside of Pall's concern that blockchain mentions of the immaterial might materialise it I don't know. Being seems to me to be largely a matter of regard, but then we're in correlationist territory. Much of philosophy seems to me to be the cognitive equivalent of the pathetic fallacy but then mind is a product of its environment. I'm not a fan of the idea of using Skynet as an aid to philosophical enquiry though. > Here we're running into the > ontology of language, if I say "blue book" does that mean it exists? What > if I say "Here is a blue book." and so forth. Mikel Dufrenne wrote about > the world of the book (he was a phenomenology, a teacher of Kristeva > etc.), what the reader takes for granted, in other words the diegesis of > the novel perhaps. And the discussion should move to diegesis as well as > Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief... Meinong's jungle is noisy at night. > > For entities we are claiming exist outside of the blockchain, the data that > > claims to register that existence is a proxy for them. We cannot validate > > the correctness of that claim using the blockchain's consensus rules in the > > same way we can for a simple value transaction if we wish to validate the > > fact of the registered object's existence outside of the blockchain. > > Something about being outside the text. We can only validate that person X > > placed a record on the blockchain, and possibly that later they sent it to > > person Y. > > This does seem to relate to the ontology of capital itself. Absolutely. And also to the capital of ontology. > > We use such proxies when buying and selling physical property such as cars > > or houses, or more pertinently when buying and selling conceptual art. > > Certificates of authenticity for conceptual art are even more material than > > blockchain records. But I feel they are still proxies for the work rather > > than being the work, although this may just be the conceptual art fan in me > > speaking. > > What I wonder about is in a sense the derailing of conceptual art, which > was a reaction at the time, at least among many artists, against the > materialism and mercantilism of the gallery/promotion structure. Given > that a conceptual work can be incorporated into blockchain, which itself > is an abstracting, is it necessary then to go into a discussion of > 'buying > and selling conceptual art'? Isn't this a leap which many artists, at > least at the time, wouldn't make; doesn't it reduce conceptualism to the > usual marketplace phenomenology, instead of the radical gesture that, at > least for some, it embodied? For some reason Beuys comes to mind - he > wasn't a conceptualist, but his teaching and art occupied such a radical > position - as does the work of the Guerrilla Girls etc. .. Yes recuperation is a constant threat. Or, viewed cynically, the point. My favourite Guerilla Girls project at the moment is one that didn't get made - they suggested that a gallerist open their gallery's books as "the show"... - Rob. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
