And of course it's valid; I actually don't think 'validity' is a
reasonable category in aesthetics - it can be defined in terms of social
groups or language games, but has nothing intrinsic about it. Another
interesting point - Seedbed could be 'directly' experienced, even without
reading the wall-text, but your work requires a knowledge of a specific
computer language. So the program can be translated one to another; I
don't see Seedbed itself translating, which is why I have fairly negative
feelings about 'recreation' art, especially in Second Life...
- Alan
On Mon, 6 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
Well, actually the perl code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$p = `Seedbed`;
would run without error. $p would contain the "not found" error. But I
don't feel that it does much in pointing out the significance of the
medium in this particular case. Perhaps if the work was about
something lost or nonexistent, it would work but not for the "Seedbed"
piece. The title of each of these Microcodes is as much a part of the
complete work as anything else. The direct reference by name has
already been made in the title and therefore I don't see any
meaningful reason to reference it again in this way. Someone might
say, "But you did it in 'Sleep'." However, I don't see that as the
same thing because 'sleep' is an actual Perl function.
If you want to attempt a phenomenological examination of the reference
itself, let me explain exactly what led to the creation of this
Microcode. I was doing some work the other day where I had to use the
"touch" command legitimately. This reminded me of James Morris'
"Microcrudities" where he used the command along with the variable
"myself". This reminded me of my code piece "exist.pl" from last year
where a perl code referenced itself in various human ways, i.e.
my_existence, my_experience, my_environment, etc. When I thought of a
Perl script referencing itself as the location of the actual file and
then 'touching' that file, it reminded me of "Seedbed". And so I
created the script that locates 'itself', that is, the file containing
the runnable code and then 'touches' the file. I decided to print the
long listing of the file each time to show the effects of 'touching'
the file (the creation date is updated each time) as a hint that this
sort of 'touching' is very different than Acconci's 'touching'. Of
course, more people are going to understand the referenced meaning
than the real meaning. But does that make it any less valid? Now that
I think about it, the work isn't about Acconci's "Seedbed" at all.
It's much more about the intended and almost inevitable
misunderstanding.
best r.
Pall
On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 11:08 PM, Alan Sondheim<[email protected]> wrote:
I agree with you here, and as usual a couple of points.
If k:> Seedbed
doesn't run, can it be said to run as not-run? This isn't trivial; Max
Black discussed it in terms of defining blackbirds as not-this, not-that;
obviously the list is infinite. Certainly 'Seedbed' as a command tells us
something - that the only thing it will run is the generic not-found - but
that's something.
I do understand the non-issue of reproduction of other work in micro-code,
and as you say, Seedbed is referenced; what I was on about, was what sort
of reference? There's a whole phenomenology here of course, which might or
might not be of interest.
- Alan, and thanks
On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
I think I have to bring things back down to the ground now. After
taking a bit of a break in the country in glorious weather, I see that
this discussion is really going far beyond the work that's being
discussed. Obviously, none of the microcodes that reference other work
(and keep in mind that there only 3 or 4 out 20-some codes that do
this) are meant to be accurate reproductions of those works. Actually,
as reproductions they are meant to fail and in doing so they become
new works of art. "Seedbed" attempts to reference the original
performance with the words "touch myself" and by using the same title.
But the way these words are applied within the code gives them a very
different meaning as code. They also produce a result and it's a
result that has absolutely nothing to do with the non-code meaning of
the works. So these arguments about whether or not the code version
references the original "Seedbed" accurately enough, are entirely
beside the point.
The reason some of the Microcodes reference older work is to highlight
the differences between the media. To show that while code as a medium
is incapable of reproducing other work created in different media, it
is also a distinct medium of its own that is capable of doing things
that other media can't.
Your suggestion of "an absolute minimum" wouldn't work as a Microcode
because, as I mentioned earlier, I set a rule for myself, that all of
the codes be runnable. Since, as Alan points out in his post,
"Seedbed" doesn't run as a Unix command, this code wouldn't really be
runnable.
As mentioned above, the idea is simply to bring the original
performance to mind. No more. Because the medium being used is
incapable of doing more. It's entirely incapable of "bringing it to
life, enacting it, redoing it, reperforming it". At the very most, it
can "suggest it".
best r.
Pall
On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:16 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
At the risk of stating the obvious, perhaps the problem here is that there
is no one essence of this performance, or any performance for that matter.
While you do say "a single 'essence'", and not "the", to me a major part
of the very idea of performance is to create something which is in excess
of language and representation, something which the techne of words or
photo or video don't capture, much less a few lines of code. While I think
the notion of translating a performance into code is interesting, perhaps
what this discussion precisely raises is that there are a multiplicity of
essences, dirtiness, fantasy, masturbation, soreness, mystery, discomfort,
the body, the absence of the body... Your microcodes seem to be a sort of
review or remix of another work, based on your personal interpretation. In
fact, I think that the reduction of the body to a set of files in your
home directory is in itself an abjection and a sadness, a departure from
all the rich, sensual complexity of the body and a reduction to a few
digital bytes. Perhaps the sadness of the digital is expressed very well
here.
Pall Thayer wrote: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.
Hmm, but here is sounds like you're talking about a simlpe representation,
and I think being very reductive! Wouldn't the absolute minimum be
something like
#!/usr/bin/perl
$p = `seedbed`;
? When in fact, the interesting part is to go beyond simply bringing the
performance to mind, but as the furtherfield review writes, to bring it to
life, to enact it, to redo it, to reperform it, in the form of an actual
running program?
On 2/7/2009, "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
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.
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