Hi Pall, perhaps slightly misunderstanding - I'm aware of what you're
saying at the end, and I wasn't think about machine feeling this or that,
but about the psychoanalytics involved by the user/subject itself - in
other words, the person who is reading the code, and it's here that the
dirtiness - abjection - can appear. Code is just code; its apperception
and/or phenomenology is something else entirely. To be really stupid (on
my end) about it, reading, say, Leviticus or Celine or de Sade can make me
really uncomfortable, even though it's 'just' language - but the 'just'
leaks out, and might conceivably leak out in code. Otherwise you've got
two different things going on - clear-style code, and reference to an
unclear history, say, of cultural artifacts - but the reference is that of
the proper name, not the uneasy content. So I agree, we're on about two
different things here, and have different interests at the heart of
things. Years ago I created a number of programs doing complex things, for
example, with no output at all - I was interested in the 'barrier' for the
user (bad name but it will do), the wall indicating something was going
on, maybe a secret. And I was interested in what that 'felt' like for the
user, not the code itself, which might or might not have been doing
amazing things (depending on subroutines etc. etc.) - Alan
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
Hi Alan,
Thanks for the comments. I guess by "the essence" of the work, I'm
considering the absolute minimum that it takes to bring to mind
"Seedbed" when looking at the code. In that sense, I think this and
"Sleep" are among the best Microcodes yet because it doesn't take an
accomplished programmer to understand the relationship given the
commands "touch $myself" and "sleep((8*60)*60)" featured prominently
in otherwise sparse code.
Regarding the body/psycological/"dis/comfort", these are interesting
only because I'm dealing with entities that are entirely void and/or
incapable of any of these. No matter what I make the machine do, it's
never going to experience and psychological effects nor discomfort. I
could attempt to create a script that disables the CPU fan and then
compiles the linux kernel in an infinite loop, causing the computer to
heat up and possibly even destroy the cpu (I don't know if this could
actually be done) but the machine still wouldn't feel any "discomfort"
because, despite sensors, it really doesn't "feel" anything and that
is an import aspect of what I'm doing with, for instance, "Seedbed" in
code.
I do understand, to an extent, what you mean but I think we're simply
approaching things from entirely different angles. I see the machine
as nothing more than that. There is no body, no feeling, no sensation
at all. If we attribute any of that to the machine then it's more
about our own body, feelings, sensations than the machine's. This is
what happens with "Seedbed" in code. If anyone looks at the code and
thinks the work has anything to do with autoeroticism, then it's their
own autoeroticism that is coming into play, not the machine's. There's
nothing inherently erotic about the "touch" command and the "$myself"
variable could be called anything at all and it wouldn't change the
functionality of the program.
best r.
Pall
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Alan Sondheim<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Paul,
The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good unix
command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well as
dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's that
barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me parallels
the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken down
psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated, or can't
it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which also
functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual body for
example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe it's in the
binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of clarity and it's hard
to see how dis/embodiment might function, even comfortably, this way. The
difference between code as medium (strict code) might be clearer than ways
of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code poorly, so in a way I don't
know what I'm talking about, and I admire what you're doing - I'm just
wondering about things like the body of code, the coded body, the decoded
body...
- Alan
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
Hi Alan,
One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
"version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
would in turn make the work overly complex.
On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<[email protected]> wrote:
I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
missing
the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write them
in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was the
target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
a less clear version of seedbed:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$myself = `id -un`;
$mybody = "/home/$myself";
while(1){
`touch $mybody`;
print `ls -ld $mybody`;
print `finger $mys...@localhost`;
}
--
james
On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <[email protected]> wrote:
....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may see
immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human activities
in short code is really interesting.
http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
--
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Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
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http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************
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| [email protected], [email protected], tel US 718-813-3285
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