Re: [-empyre-] Belated hellos

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Maria,

Happy to see you contribute to this discussion, the elusive flow of mind
play., that brings word play, or vice versa.

The Turkish poet Orhan Veli placed awkwardness on the left hand:

My Left Hand
I got drunk
And thought of you.
My left hand
My awkward hand
My poor hand.

Emily Dickinson says, "I play at Riches -- to appease/ The Clamoring for
Gold -- play, an alchemicall gold to transform the world. That is the
revolution, I think, the world was talking about.

The poet Seyhan Erozçelik says,
"...
blowing a fuse
words are morphing into toys... and start flying." (*Rosestrikes and Coffee
Grinds*)

"The secrets of a language're hidden, in another language,
oh, tantra
tantra
the secret of my heart!" (*Io's Song*)

"tantra": weaving in hindu, also wave, music, from the into-European root
"tenure" which means extension (desire)... which in the West is contained
in the word "*con*tent" with the residual pun "con*tent"*: ""In thine own
bud buries thy content" ("Sonnet One, W.S.)

Maria, all my life, having earned my living through antique oriental
carpets, I am very aware of the materiality of textile, and the incredible
beauty they may achieve. In fact, essentially, am I not after a decorative
poetics.

To be continued...

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 5:21 PM Maria Damon  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Empyre 1 poetics and play
>
>
>
> Belated hellos, all!
>
> I am so grateful for the opportunity to interact with ideas here that i
> almost don’t know where to begin.
>
>
>
> It’s always *awkward* to introduce oneself (Truong Tran: “You begin with
> a foundation premised on shame”),
>
> but *awkwardness* (that weird mash-up of eagerness and diffidence) is
> often an initial stage of play, of making, of thinking, and especially of
> introductions.
>
>
>
> Awkward: *awk (adj.)*
>
> mid-15c., "turned the wrong way," from Old Norse afugr "turned backwards,
> wrong, contrary," from Proto-Germanic *afug- (source also of Old Saxon
> aboh, Old High German apuh, Middle Dutch avesch, Dutch aafsch), from PIE
> *apu-ko-, from root **apo-
> *
> "off, away."
>
> *Apo*, in turn, “forms all or part of: ab-
> ; abaft
> ;
> ablaut
> ;
> aft ;
> after
> ;
> apanthropy
> 
> (“aversion to human company, love of solitude”); aperitif
> ;
> aperture
> ;
> apo- ;
> apocalypse
> ;
> apocryphal
> ;
> Apollyon
> 
> (“destroying angel of the bottomless pit”); apology
> ;
> apoplexy
> ;
> apostle
> ;
> apostrophe
> ;
> apothecary
> ;
> apotheosis
> ;
> awk ;
> awkward
> ;
> ebb ;
> eftsoons
> ;
> of ; off
> ; offal
> ;
> overt
> .”
>
>
>
> With all this catastrophic baggage, how can we help but want to run away
> when asked to account for ourselves? Let’s take refuge in *play*, as we
> do in our teachers, our body of resources, our communities, however flawed
> or tenuous:
>
>
>
> And guess what? *Play*’s ultimate etymology is, fittingly, uncertain!
>
>
>
> play (v.) 
>
> Old English 

Re: [-empyre-] sex death love - on AGEING

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Is anybody familiar with German director Fassbinder's film *Fear Eats the
Soul, *the love between a German woman in her sixties and a North African
man in around his forties?

Murat

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 11:04 AM warkk  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> thank you  Shu Lea for recalling Sandy’s legendary performance. It’s also
> described in the book I’m writing about right now: Time is a thing a body
> moves through by T. Fleischmann. The book is a lovely meditation on Felix
> Gonzales Torres among other things.
>
> It had not occurred to me that when I saw Sandy perform she would have
> been about the age I am now. I don’t know why I  like the thought of that.
>
> They say transition is a second puberty but I like to think puberty is a
> transition also. So is menopause. Transition is just a thing our bodies do.
> They mess with the times if the body.
>
> I do feel like I am both 58 and 18 at the same time. My 18 year old self
> is going out dancing at raves and doing drugs and making out with strangers
> while my 58 year old self is doing her best to keep her safe.
>
> My 18 year old self is making a lot of friends who are a little older and
> wiser on her timeline. On the other timeline they all seem to be 30 years
> old, where my 58 year old self marvels at how advanced they are compared to
> when I (we) were 30. The kids are all right. They are oblivious to what
> will hit them if the world endures long enough for them to be 58 and I’m
> reluctant to tell them too much.
>
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 9:23 AM Shu Lea Cheang 
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> Dear Annie
>>
>> Thank you.
>>
>> Very courageous for posting here on this particular topics and i also
>> thank Miha, Ana, Murat, Alan, Ruth, Simon, Theresa and Sandy who share
>> their very personal thoughts on this. I do want us to feel here at -empyre-
>> soft skinned space, among our colleagues (contemporaries), we can bring
>> these issues up. Being naked, vulnerable and brave. For a long time. i have
>> not thought it is possible to bring my sex work (my side job as scifi porn
>> filmmaker) or queer/gender issues into 'legitimate' media forum discussion.
>> I am glad this september here at -empyre-, we make a step forward.
>>
>> Without getting into penetration, Sandy's orgasmic performance in which
>> she relocates her G-spot to her palm, rubbing it (masturbate) to arrive at
>> orgasm with public encouragement. Sandy was performing this act in pretty
>> much all major media conferences in the 90s,to recall this act, Sandy must
>> be in her late 50s at the time? She has virtually repositioned her orgasmic
>> power.
>>
>> Sandy Stone on interaction, interface and Desire.
>> https://duplox.wzb.eu/docs/panel/sandy.html
>>
>> best
>>
>> sl
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 30.09.19 12:32, Annie Abrahams wrote:
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Trying to look back at these few days I notice it is difficult to treat
>> the subject of "sexuality and age" in public. I read some very touching
>> stories on ageing (Simon, Ana), but we only sidewise touched on sexuality,
>> on the kind (what kind?) that goes with old age.
>>
>> We only sidewise touched on sexuality, on the kind (what kind?) that goes
>> with old age. But that is a construct (Miha). Thanks to Ruth for
>> encouraging me, for pointing to how politic the subject is and to how
>> body-chemistry permanently changes the way it feels to be alive, and in
>> relation to other people, that it opens up whole new dimensions of relating
>> and resonating with the world, whilst leaving behind others. From
>> Murat's reaction I learned how awfully difficult it is to discuss the
>> subject in public.
>> I think I will go on researching, but I will try to create safer
>> conditions. It feels necessary and I am not afraid to fail (nothing to
>> loose :)). If so, I will contact some of you again. I will need diversity.
>> If someone else on the list would be interested or can give me tips for a
>> "how to" please write me a personal mail.
>>
>> Ageing goes with loss as Murat said.
>> Socializing our houses and our ageing (Ana) won't be done for us, so yes
>> we should start making kin, taking care (Sandy) early.
>> It can also be an opportunity. It is an opportunity for resilience and
>> change.
>>
>> Shu Lea thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to mutate my
>> anger to an interesting exchange.
>>
>> Ps.
>> I would love to see the exhibition Alan dreams of - Anger is a force 
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 10:29 AM Allucquere Rosanne Stone <
>> sa...@sandystone.com> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> I just returned from dinner with a robust, boisterous group of people
>>> who live in cohousing.  They decided to follow Donna's injunction to "make
>>> kin", and 

Re: [-empyre-] sex death love - on AGEING

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear Miha. teal,

You approach aging from a metaphysical, intellectual point of view.
Whereas, aging/dying is a series of losses. When you arrive at your last
loss, you die. This is interior, subjective, not analytical or
metaphysical, reality of death, whether you are a man or a woman, an animal
or human. The individual himself/herself, and others (the individual,
family, culture, social institutions, economic system, in that concentric
order) can either ease and compensate for that inexorable process or add to
its misery and speed it up. The final step is always the same.

If anyone is interested in how this process occurs, we can discuss it here.

Ciao,
Murat

If



On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 2:25 AM Miha Colner  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Dear Alan,
>
> thank you for your response; it is obvious that people of age are often
> the subject of caricaturing and laughter; the things which are expected
> from elderly such as being wise and calm are probably even more
> frustrating; as Simone de Beauvoir noted in her book 'Coming of Age' that
> the society finds anger of old people unacceptable while the anger and
> violence of children and youth, for instance, is tolerated. Therefore the
> anger that you mention is rarely (publicly) expressed.
>
> I guess people, when they are young and/or middle aged, don't think much
> about the old age; this period seems very distant and alien. I am 41 and I
> can only observe the situation of elderly from a side but I guess one
> doesn't have to be of age to think about old age. However, in these cases
> the perspectives are probably very different.
>
> I am glad to hear that there is anger expressed for being discarded as
> useless, or as you expressed yourself that older people have "nothing to
> offer" anymore. This is probably based on the idea of inter-generational
> struggle.
>
> There is an inevitable struggle going on between different generations.
> Both sides have it right: younger generations want their place under the
> sun and tehy have to take it by themselves - to gain recognition and claim
> the positions of power; older generations have to claim they are not
> useless yet. Positions of power are always taken from previous/older
> generations and youngsters are always sure that they have to wait to long
> to get there and people of age often think they are dismissed and excluded
> too early. These are fundamentaly opposite positions which are inevitably
> intimate and embeded in one's own position.
>
> But it is very rare to find an equilibrium or let's call it
> inter-generational cooperation where older people share experiences  and
> younger are being gradually prepared to take their roles. Let's take
> leading positions as an example. In the place where I live (Slovenia) there
> is a habit that leading roles in institutions (academic, bureaucratic, art,
> culture) can last endlessly - it is not strange to have the same director
> of a museum or a professor at the academy for thirty and more years (over
> that time one actually becomes seemingly irreplaceable) and over that time
> directors/professors can create a complete mechanism of power which extends
> to control of their heirs. So we have a joke about the principle where
> professors or directors always hire dummer assistant who would never
> challenge them and that this cycle is broken only when, after few rounds,
> the assistant becomes so retarded that, when he/she takes over the power,
> doesn't notice that the next assistant is actually wiser... and then the
> cycle brokes and starts anew.
>
> But as I said the anger of younger generation that wants to claim power is
> considered exceptable while anger of older people is not. I agree that a
> big part of that stigma comes from mass media and popular culture. It seems
> there is a huge burden imposed to people of age: coping with the notion of
> uselessness, decreasing power and strength and expectation that they will
> always be an old wise men, content, understanding and in constant "state of
> zen".
>
> Anger is a good perspective; thank you!
>
> Miha
>
>
>
> On Sun, 29 Sep 2019 at 05:03, Ruth Catlow  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Dear Murat,
>>
>> I take your point. And its a good call to invite me to re-read Alan's
>> post, which I think resonates with my own (in the description of
>> grandparent as a constraining assigned role).
>>
>> I was careless. I value the insights into systemic oppression offered by
>> intersectional feminist approaches when thinking about this. AND I should
>> have made clear that I understand

Re: [-empyre-] sex death love - on AGEING

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Yes, Ruth. Thank you for your response.

Murat

On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 11:03 PM Ruth Catlow  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Dear Murat,
>
> I take your point. And its a good call to invite me to re-read Alan's
> post, which I think resonates with my own (in the description of
> grandparent as a constraining assigned role).
>
> I was careless. I value the insights into systemic oppression offered by
> intersectional feminist approaches when thinking about this. AND I should
> have made clear that I understand patriarchy (asserted through religion,
> law and family) to be equally oppressive and restrictive to people
> regardless of their sex.
>
> Thanks
> Ruth
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 7:15 PM Murat Nemet-Nejat 
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Ruth and other participants,
>>
>> Why is the issue and prejudices around aging are focused around women
>> with the added implication that these prejudices are the work of men ("the
>> machinery of patriarch")? As if men do not get old and suffer social
>> prejudices despite the fact that Alan Sondheim gave a good list of them. As
>> far as I can see, no one resp[onded to him. I thinkwe should try to get
>> outside our narrow identity frameworks if we want any meaningful discussios
>> nor sharing of experiences.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Murat
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 11:20 AM Ruth Catlow 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>
>>> I'd like to thank you all, and especially Annie, for your writing in
>>> this thread.
>>>
>>>
>>> I remember in 2010 when Annie wrote about menopause and sexuality. I was
>>> struck by her anger that no-one ever told her/us that it might be that way.
>>>
>>>
>>> The anger alerted me to something very important.
>>>
>>>
>>> It hadn't occurred to me then that my aging body-chemistry could
>>> permanently change the way it feels to be alive, and in relation to other
>>> people...which it does.
>>>
>>>
>>> And that if it could, that it might open up whole new dimensions of
>>> relating and resonating with the world, whilst leaving behind others. It
>>> does.
>>>
>>>
>>> It also hadn't really dawned on me how much of my place in the world was
>>> made out of something like sexuality, and therefore narrated and shaped by
>>> a mess of political social construction.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is a very difficult topic to be open about on a personal
>>> level...another layer of the machinery of patriarchy that determines
>>> women's identity and role in relation to the institution of the family
>>> (rehearsing an old Christian line here I know) - of women's best destiny
>>> lying along the continuum of innocent girl, through sexual creature and
>>> nurturing mother, to kind grandmother, to scary crone - with sexuality
>>> confined to sexual creature and mother segment. To step off this line is
>>> still to invite blame, shame and harm in so many many places.
>>>
>>>
>>> And as with many feminist questions, much of the delicate work of
>>> confronting and rewriting the given narrative to match a living experience
>>> that breaks oppressive and unjust constraints, has to be done first, in
>>> private, to avoid exposing and betraying the personal trust of our closest
>>> friends and lovers. Our shared experiences cannot automatically be used as
>>> subject for public examination.
>>>
>>>
>>> So I read this thread as a wonderful use of the extended zone of trust
>>> created by this 'soft skinned space'. I am deeply appreciative of the
>>> courage and directness of this conversation.
>>>
>>> <3<3<3<3
>>>
>>> Ruth
>>>
>>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 1:01 PM Annie Abrahams 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>> Hi Sandy,
>>>>
>>>> I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but your remarks were so full of
>>>> enthusiasm and positivity that I needed another take on it. I think
>>>> you understand that.
>>>> Your remark triggered something in me that I tried to analyze and write
>>>> into existence.
>>>> That is not easy.
>>>> I am still

Re: [-empyre-] sex death love - on AGEING

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Ruth and other participants,

Why is the issue and prejudices around aging are focused around women with
the added implication that these prejudices are the work of men ("the
machinery of patriarch")? As if men do not get old and suffer social
prejudices despite the fact that Alan Sondheim gave a good list of them. As
far as I can see, no one resp[onded to him. I thinkwe should try to get
outside our narrow identity frameworks if we want any meaningful discussios
nor sharing of experiences.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 11:20 AM Ruth Catlow  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> I'd like to thank you all, and especially Annie, for your writing in this
> thread.
>
>
> I remember in 2010 when Annie wrote about menopause and sexuality. I was
> struck by her anger that no-one ever told her/us that it might be that way.
>
>
> The anger alerted me to something very important.
>
>
> It hadn't occurred to me then that my aging body-chemistry could
> permanently change the way it feels to be alive, and in relation to other
> people...which it does.
>
>
> And that if it could, that it might open up whole new dimensions of
> relating and resonating with the world, whilst leaving behind others. It
> does.
>
>
> It also hadn't really dawned on me how much of my place in the world was
> made out of something like sexuality, and therefore narrated and shaped by
> a mess of political social construction.
>
>
> This is a very difficult topic to be open about on a personal
> level...another layer of the machinery of patriarchy that determines
> women's identity and role in relation to the institution of the family
> (rehearsing an old Christian line here I know) - of women's best destiny
> lying along the continuum of innocent girl, through sexual creature and
> nurturing mother, to kind grandmother, to scary crone - with sexuality
> confined to sexual creature and mother segment. To step off this line is
> still to invite blame, shame and harm in so many many places.
>
>
> And as with many feminist questions, much of the delicate work of
> confronting and rewriting the given narrative to match a living experience
> that breaks oppressive and unjust constraints, has to be done first, in
> private, to avoid exposing and betraying the personal trust of our closest
> friends and lovers. Our shared experiences cannot automatically be used as
> subject for public examination.
>
>
> So I read this thread as a wonderful use of the extended zone of trust
> created by this 'soft skinned space'. I am deeply appreciative of the
> courage and directness of this conversation.
>
> <3<3<3<3
>
> Ruth
>
> On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 1:01 PM Annie Abrahams  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Sandy,
>>
>> I'm sorry if I gave that impression, but your remarks were so full of
>> enthusiasm and positivity that I needed another take on it. I think you
>> understand that.
>> Your remark triggered something in me that I tried to analyze and write
>> into existence.
>> That is not easy.
>> I am still thinking about starting a short research that tries to talk
>> about sex and ageing. Take a month to see and read all I can, to do some
>> interviews and record what I find on a website. Trying to scetch a very
>> divers map of the "territory". I feel an urge, but is it enough  is it
>> important?
>> Would others be interested? and how should I approach such a thing to let
>> it be important to others?
>>
>> Cheering back
>> Annie
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 28, 2019 at 5:28 AM Allucquere Rosanne Stone <
>> allucquere.st...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Annie,
>>>
>>> I'm not sure if you were claiming that my remarks, insofar as they
>>> touched on sex, confirmed "mainstream" ideas.  Perhaps what I wrote could
>>> have been read that way, but only if you don't know me very well. :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Sandy
>>>
>>>
>>> Annie Abrahams wrote on 9/27/19 4:18 AM:
>>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> When McKenzie asked about ageing and Sandy answered I felt unease. I
>>> thought my own experience not relevant for the context and so I didn't
>>> react. Also I needed some distance to check my feelings and to see if this
>>> wasn't an only personal issue. So I wrote Shu Lea and talked with friends.
>>> Thanks Shu Lea for inviting me to try to express myself.
>>>
>>> My reaction is not about “us” older people – we find our ways - it is
>>> for the younger ones (as the 18 year old McKenzie) so they will have a more
>>> diverse image of what might come. Sexuality in old age and ageing in
>>> general are subjects that are not treated seriously. Ageing can be hard and
>>> we should be openly talking about it in detail. Ageing is also beautiful,
>>> yes, but not only ….
>>> We all have our own stories, our own way of dealing, enjoying and
>>> mourning about it.
>>>
>>> 

Re: [-empyre-] Agnes Varda and Angela Davis

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Ana, nice to see you on Empyre again.
Murat

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 6:55 PM Gloria Kim  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> These are incredible memories. What a way to honor these three formidable
> artists. Here is a story of the magical and intoxicating force that was
> Agnes Varda.
> Summer 2009, Paris, Rue Daguerre. For reasons that are too long to
> describe here, I found myself walking (unbeknownst to me at the moment)
> into the home office of Agnes Varda. Coming in from a sunny afternoon into
> a darkened, cluttered office, my eyes barely adjusted when I made out her
> unmistakalbe profile in the dimly-lit room. She was perched on a stool. Her
> profile was traced by lamplight. She was talking on a corded phone, and
> looked to the door when I entered. I was wearing an old victorian
> sleeping cap made of ivory crochet and big pink ribbon flowers flopping on
> each side. She got off the phone, slid off the stool, walked over, touched
> my arm and said (in French) "Dear girl. What A beautiful hat. Did your
> grandmother make it?" I shit my jeans and tried to answer back something as
> beautiful, clever, and life-altering as the person who was standing before
> me, but all I could manage was an inaudible "non." A little later (I had a
> reason to be there but drew everything out in order to be able to be in her
> presence a little longer) she was showing someone - a "client" she called
> her - some slides on a large light box table. I stood at the opposite
> corner of the table pretending to look at something else on a shelf. Of
> course, although her head was facing downwards, she could feel my gaze. She
> looked up at me, flashed this unforgettable grin, made little pawing
> motions with her hands, and playfully growled "Rrrreeeowwwrrr." I don't
> know what happened after that. I don't know how I exited, when I did, how I
> got back home nor much of anything else. Agnes Varda, my heart is a
> heart-shaped potato and it is for you.
>
>
> Gloria Chan-Sook Kim
> Assistant Professor of Media and Culture
> Department of Media and Culture
> 3137 INST CHASS South Building
> University of California-Riverside
> 900 University Avenue
> Riverside, CA 92521
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 9, 2019 at 7:35 PM Renate Ferro  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Ana wrote;
>> 
>> “But I think we all share a common link made by small chains of
>> curiosity and sharing, a kind of cultural mapping where figures as Varda,
>> Quintanilla, Schneemann and Hammer are interlaced.”
>> 
>> Dear Ana what a beautiful post after a long day.  I remember listening to
>> a charged lecture by Angela Davis in the mid-80’s.  She spent a good part
>> of her lecture talking about the inequities within the Panther group
>> between men and women.  It was a strong and clear lecture with a strong
>> message at at time when there were strikingly strong rifts between white
>> women and women of color in the United States.
>>
>> Thank you so much for sharing your own political history which you have
>> done somewhat here on –empyre-over the years.  I continue to be in awe of
>> your bravery and experiences.  Here is a link to an interesting Question
>> and Answer period about the Panther film.
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo81Grb8A9Y
>>
>> Really looking forward to hearing more about your influences Ana.
>> Renate
>>
>>
>> Renate Ferro
>> Visiting Associate Professor
>> Director of Undergraduate Studies
>> Department of Art
>> Tjaden Hall 306
>> rfe...@cornell.edu
>>
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] (no subject)

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--In my most recent poem *Animals of Dawn *(Talisman, 2016) I deal with the
same idea of stasis (its relation to infinity) in terms of Hamlet's delay
in taking revenge --that he does that because he exists in an another
temporal dimension than everyday life. The following passage from Levinas
is a caption to one of the pieces ("fragments") in the book,: ""The idea of
infinity is then not the only one that teaches what we are ignorant of
It is not a reminiscence. It is experience in the sole radical sense of the
term... without this exteriority being able to be integrate."[i]

--

[i]Experience eliminates memory and becomes the language of the soul (of
*is*). In the soul, motion exists as idea, as thought tissue in motion. In
this language the non-integrate exterior (the idea of infinity) and the
ineffable interior (the eroding dream) become visible, as joined, for the
duration of an instant (as nutrinos), in the soul's motions towards
forgetting, and dying.


Ciao,

Murat



On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 4:22 PM Elizabeth Wijaya  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Stirling Newberry: "The space also has differing viewpoints, as does every
> individual viewer. Art in situ is, too some extent, illusory."
>
> In his essay, "Reality and its Shadow, " Levinas is suspicious of art as
> monstrously inhuman because it is trapped in the stasis of a "Meanwhile"
> that does not come to pass. He says that "art is the falling movement on
> the hither side of time, into fate." In his reading, the haunted
> temporality of the image—that is neither in the moment, nor has any
> future—is trapped in stasis. Levinas lists non-plastic arts, "music,
> literature, theater and cinema," that too do not escape the shadow of the
> meanwhile. For Levinas, the meanwhile is an "eternal duration of the
> interval" and it is Art that brings about just this duration in the
> interval, where the shadow of reality is immobilized.
>
> In my rereading of the meanwhile in Levinas's through its shadow, I
>  propose that the relation between art and art in remediation as the
> meeting of shadows and shadows.  If the shadow is reality's parallel
> possibility where reality's nonexistence is discovered, Levinas's work
> could be read as a philosophy of the shadow that haunts the visible.
>
> In a chapter of my book project, I read the rhythm in Levinas's oeuvre
> between belief in vertical transcendence and the turns to darkness
> alongside the acts of substitution that link the intervals of reality and
> the shadow of art through the late 1990s textures of the Bangkok alley in
> In the Mood for Love  and the remediation of *In the Mood for Love*, by
> Singapore artist Ming Wong in an installation 'In Love for the Mood."
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #7: Kerry Downey -

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Daniel,

Comparing it to the airplane sequence in "The Ticket That Exploded", I
dislike Kerry Downey's piece, even for the sake of the issues we are
discussing here, intensely. In the airplane scene, events relate to each
other with no fancy tricks, just a pan of the camera or I think unobtrusive
cuts. In this piece the relationship is achieved through the digital
machine. In the terms of our discussion, I would say it reeks of
manipulation. What this video communicates to me is not a message of
liberation through contact with reality and the body ("..("the somatic ways
feminist and queer histories move through bodies.) ; but rather the
contrary, that digitally programmed robot, can replicate human movement and
behavior: the very anti-thesis of what the video claims to achieve. I find
the work "arty" in the worst sense of the word -- a "wrong" direction.

Daniel, I hope you don't mind my being direct. Otherwise, the discussions
end up being echo chambers.

Ciao,
Murat



On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 10:22 AM, Daniel Lichtman 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> -“body dubbing” as I heard in the video. a good starting point for
> thinking about this work
>
> -artist imitates Angela’s body movements in the form of a silhouette (via
> overhead projector according to description). relation/translation of body
> movement in for form of a drawing with water and ink. artist also repeats
> character’s voice and dogs movements
>
> -i look back and forth between the two parts of the video, creating some
> visual/shapes-based/ fluid connection between the ink/water and Angela
> talking.
>
> -Angela makes fishing flies that link her to the body-form of insect and
> the tastes of fish in the river. she makes these connections through
> working with her hands. Artist makes connections to Angela through work
> with their hands, body
>
> -love Angela’s cursing. Her reflections are not detached intellect; they
> are emotional and through the various bodies she interacts with
>
> -Angela seeks “responsive state.” Such a state sounds lovely.
>
> -seems important that Artist’s imitation is in silhouette form. Abstracts
> the relationship between artist and Angela. though artist mimics Angela’s
> movements fairly exactly, the silhouette creates space for inhabiting this
> relationship in an open-ended (full of potential instead of precisely
> metaphorical, closed-down) way.
>
> -love imitation of dog. use of dogs fur. dog, and also the river and
> forest—seem like a substrate or glue for holding the work together.
>
> -“they should be peeing” it’s obvious isn’t it
>
> -whisper at the beginning makes me feel I’m privy to a secret—the work
> will uncover secret dimensions of their relationship.
>
> -also wonder how this is installed—is this documentation of a performance?
> or a video? was there a live audience for Kerry’s actions? Doesn’t look
> like it. When Kerry’s talking, looks like they’re talking directly to me,
> the viewer of the video. The setup of the video puts the viewer in close
> quarters with the various bodies, voices, movements, skills, histories,
> actions, etc etc presented in the work.
>
> On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 10:29 PM Daniel Lichtman 
> wrote:
>
>> Kerry Downey
>> Fishing With Angela
>>
>> Link to video and documentation: http://kerrydowney.com/videos--/
>> fishing-with-angela/1
>>
>> Kerry Downey (b.1979, Ft. Lauderdale) is a multidisciplinary artist whose
>> work draws relationships between states of embodiment and forms of power.
>> Downey has recently had a solo show at CAVE in Detroit, MI and a two-person
>> show at Knockdown Center in Maspeth, NY. They have also exhibited at the
>> Queens Museum, Flushing, NY; the Hessel Museum at Bard College, Annandale,
>> NY; the Drawing Center, New York, NY; Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT;
>> The Alice, Seattle, WA; and at the Paris International with Taylor Macklin
>> of Zurich. In 2015, Downey was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation
>> Emerging Artist Grant.  Artist-in-residencies and Fellowships include
>> Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Triangle Arts Association,
>> SHIFT at the EFA Project Space, the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, Real
>> Time and Space in Oakland, CA, the Vermont Studio Center, and the
>> Queer/Art/Mentorship Program. Their work has been in Artforum, the Brooklyn
>> Rail, and the Washington Post. They hold a BA from Bard College and an MFA
>> from Hunter College.
>>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #1: Benjamin Orlow: The Ticket That Exploded

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Daniel,

I just shared "The Ticket That Exploded" on my Facebook Poetry Page (
https://www.facebook.com/groups/255509864471609/ )
What is interesting to me about the video is not its constructio(the
different sections seem to me basically arbitrary, episodic); but the
juiciness of the individual section. The airplane sequence is absolutely
terrifying, and the question remains for me after things "quiet down" is
who took the video since it seems to be taken in real time. The taker of
the video (in that specific sense the artist) seems to be swallowed inside
the event: not looking at (therefore manipulating), but looking "back". An
amazing sequence, how different people react to danger or echoes of danger.
Of course, if you tell me that this entire sequence is not in real time but
a collage (therefore, I am manipulated), then I am utterly fooled; but not
"convinced." That revelation, if true, would weaken the sequence for me,
turning it into "art" in exactly a negative sense.
The nudist scene is delicious, a comedy of manners. I particularly like the
fat guy in the corner taking different poses by shifting the hand he places
on his waist, with hiking/military boots on. Do I hear people laughing
behind the camera?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 10:06 AM, Daniel Lichtman 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Murat,
> It'd be really interesting to hear your response to some of the artworks!
>
> Best,
> Dan
>
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 11:51 AM Murat Nemet-Nejat 
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Daniel,
>>
>> "For me the most 'utopian' experience I have as an art viewer is the one
>> where I am manipulated into seeing new relationships between forms,
>> materials, categories, languages, etc. And hopefully in ways that trickle
>> (directly or not) into my understanding of the mechanics of some part of
>> culture or society. Hopefully defamiliarizing my relation to what it means
>> to communicate, create, and participate in the social world around me. In
>> my art-viewing (or anything-viewing) experience, this is the broadest
>> possible meaning of the political.
>>
>>
>> Just the act of presenting something as an artwork (a stone, a found
>> video, a painting) "
>>
>> If what you are saying is the ideal way of regarding art, then each work
>> of art can have only one meaning, one way of being experienced, the way the
>> artist has manipulated it. That obviously is not so. That is a sterile way
>> of approaching art.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Murat
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Daniel Lichtman 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> thank you for your response murat!!
>>>
>>> For me the most 'utopian' experience I have as an art viewer is the one
>>> where I am manipulated into seeing new relationships between forms,
>>> materials, categories, languages, etc. And hopefully in ways that trickle
>>> (directly or not) into my understanding of the mechanics of some part of
>>> culture or society. Hopefully defamiliarizing my relation to what it means
>>> to communicate, create, and participate in the social world around me. In
>>> my art-viewing (or anything-viewing) experience, this is the broadest
>>> possible meaning of the political.
>>>
>>>
>>> Just the act of presenting something as an artwork (a stone, a found
>>> video, a painting)
>>>
>>> I often think of the experience of looking at artwork to be centered
>>> around manipulation.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 8:08 PM Murat Nemet-Nejat 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>> Hi Daniel,
>>>>
>>>> A found tape also was manipulated when it was made. When we make a
>>>> sentence, we manipulate words. To make a word we manipulate sounds. Film,
>>>> video, photography are language. Languages occur through manipulation. For
>>>> instance, we don't know what stones are saying, feeling, thinking (or if
>>>> they are doing any of this) because we do not experience *their* 
>>>> manipulation.
>>>> It is extremely passive --a state you seem to find utopian. Lack of
>>>> manipulation by one does not liberate that person or animal or thing from
>>>> manipulation, just makes it susceptible to manipulation by others. In my
>>>> view, what is more

Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #1: Benjamin Orlow: The Ticket That Exploded

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Daniel,

"For me the most 'utopian' experience I have as an art viewer is the one
where I am manipulated into seeing new relationships between forms,
materials, categories, languages, etc. And hopefully in ways that trickle
(directly or not) into my understanding of the mechanics of some part of
culture or society. Hopefully defamiliarizing my relation to what it means
to communicate, create, and participate in the social world around me. In
my art-viewing (or anything-viewing) experience, this is the broadest
possible meaning of the political.


Just the act of presenting something as an artwork (a stone, a found video,
a painting) "

If what you are saying is the ideal way of regarding art, then each work of
art can have only one meaning, one way of being experienced, the way the
artist has manipulated it. That obviously is not so. That is a sterile way
of approaching art.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Daniel Lichtman 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> thank you for your response murat!!
>
> For me the most 'utopian' experience I have as an art viewer is the one
> where I am manipulated into seeing new relationships between forms,
> materials, categories, languages, etc. And hopefully in ways that trickle
> (directly or not) into my understanding of the mechanics of some part of
> culture or society. Hopefully defamiliarizing my relation to what it means
> to communicate, create, and participate in the social world around me. In
> my art-viewing (or anything-viewing) experience, this is the broadest
> possible meaning of the political.
>
>
> Just the act of presenting something as an artwork (a stone, a found
> video, a painting)
>
> I often think of the experience of looking at artwork to be centered
> around manipulation.
>
> On Mon, Jul 9, 2018 at 8:08 PM Murat Nemet-Nejat 
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Daniel,
>>
>> A found tape also was manipulated when it was made. When we make a
>> sentence, we manipulate words. To make a word we manipulate sounds. Film,
>> video, photography are language. Languages occur through manipulation. For
>> instance, we don't know what stones are saying, feeling, thinking (or if
>> they are doing any of this) because we do not experience *their* 
>> manipulation.
>> It is extremely passive --a state you seem to find utopian. Lack of
>> manipulation by one does not liberate that person or animal or thing from
>> manipulation, just makes it susceptible to manipulation by others. In my
>> view, what is more crucial, an awareness, watchfulness of who is doing the
>> manipulation, the processes by which it comes about (in a film or a
>> photograph or a piece of art or in a politician or in a discussion like
>> here) and make sure that every/multiple forces can enter it. In other
>> words, in my view, what is crucial, realistically utopian,so to speak, is
>> to prevent manipulation to create closed systems.
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Murat
>>
>> On Sun, Jul 8, 2018 at 9:53 PM, Aviva Rahmani 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> Nude Alpine hikers actually sounds very Swiss.
>>>
>>> Aviva Rahmani, PhD
>>> Follow my work: https://d.rip/aviva
>>> www.ghostn...@ghostnets.com <http://www.ghostn...@ghostnets.com>
>>> Watch ³Blued Trees²:  https://vimeo.com/135290635
>>> www.gulftogulf.org <http://www.gulftogulf.org/>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7/8/18, 9:52 PM, "Daniel Lichtman"  wrote:
>>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>
>>> ___
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Artwork #1: Benjamin Orlow: The Ticket That Exploded

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Daniel,

A found tape also was manipulated when it was made. When we make a
sentence, we manipulate words. To make a word we manipulate sounds. Film,
video, photography are language. Languages occur through manipulation. For
instance, we don't know what stones are saying, feeling, thinking (or if
they are doing any of this) because we do not experience *their* manipulation.
It is extremely passive --a state you seem to find utopian. Lack of
manipulation by one does not liberate that person or animal or thing from
manipulation, just makes it susceptible to manipulation by others. In my
view, what is more crucial, an awareness, watchfulness of who is doing the
manipulation, the processes by which it comes about (in a film or a
photograph or a piece of art or in a politician or in a discussion like
here) and make sure that every/multiple forces can enter it. In other
words, in my view, what is crucial, realistically utopian,so to speak, is
to prevent manipulation to create closed systems.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Jul 8, 2018 at 9:53 PM, Aviva Rahmani 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Nude Alpine hikers actually sounds very Swiss.
>
> Aviva Rahmani, PhD
> Follow my work: https://d.rip/aviva
> www.ghostn...@ghostnets.com 
> Watch ³Blued Trees²:  https://vimeo.com/135290635
> www.gulftogulf.org 
>
>
>
> On 7/8/18, 9:52 PM, "Daniel Lichtman"  wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Dolly, a very interesting text.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Jun 30, 2018 at 6:49 AM,  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> How do we create forms of life that no longer reproduce the machines of
> capital?
> How do we desert the system that has no outside?
> How do we refuse to become the fools in the palace?
>
> ***
> *  Welcome to LambdaMOO!  *
> ***
> Running Version 1.8.3+47 of LambdaMOO
> The lag is low; there are 42 connected.
> *** Connected ***
>
> Deep Sea Abyss
> A vast dark expanse. Strange bioluminescence. Volcanic vents and oceanic
> harmonics. Silence (the most advanced form of intelligence). Go east to
> the autonomous zone of la zad of Notre-dame-des-Landes. Take rebel raft
> regatta to Occupy Theory, Occupy Strategy. Go down on the altar of
> abjection.
>
> radio mycelium, mushrooms harvested from the reactor in Chernobyl, rolling
> Jubilees and G-slime (performing a Mycelic Brain Ritual) are here.
>
> You yawn, rub your eyes, and officially wake up.
> Last connected Tue Jun 26 20:06:41 2018 ACDT from 118.211.40.5
> You hear a distant kachunk as your time card is punched in on the time
> clock.
>
> The procedural poets of the natural world, mushrooms are magical because
> they are about chance (the conditions have to be just right for one to pop
> up, for you to perceive it, for you two to meet…)
>
> > look radio mycelium
> You see fungal transceivers sprouting mycelial antennas forming an
> imaginary underground network.
>
> https://twitter.com/hashtag/LesbiaNRx?src=hash=en
>
> > look me
> WitchMum - a bundle of twigs bound with babies’ tears fomented in the
> Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. She is holding a tiny brass key
> stolen from Gilles de Rais.
>
> > @go War on Terror Universities
> You can’t go that way.
>
> again-
> I am standing still in this junction with walkers in all directions,
> that particular center of the universe in Shibuya's transit exit.
> the swarm of thoughts from outer universe hitting at you... spores
> falling like spring snow, invasive as they are.
> Help me through this last few days of June..
>
> > @join slimegirl
>
> 
> As you slip through the 'mud patch' you realise this isn't mud per se; but
> a familiar feeling of wet stickiness. You fall onto a bed of Nyx Slime.
>
> /a gesture that potentially “dissolved” the U.S. border with its poetry/
>
> Slime Girl (1.0) slides in and hands your Slime Cave membership card and
> complimentary Slime Pig (Whatever you do Slime Pigs MUST NOT LEAVE THE
> CAVE). To the east there is a Cavern, which its faint whistling sounds
> like the songs of Slime(mer)maids. To the West, a door, that longs to be
> opened; but how. Up, is to The Junkyard, where Alabaster plays, and
> 'down?' you say, well, you might just have to take the plunge.
> slimegirl (fluent in the trading of secrets) is here.
>
> We need an opposite to the algorithm.
> We need to sleep for regeneration our brain.
>
> > look slimegirl
>
> slimegirl
> Slime molds are in their own right a strange creature. Not quite plant,
> not quite animal, not quite fungi, but something else. They live a
> double-life, in most cases as nothing more than single-celled organisms,
> but in dire situations where food is scarce, they form a collective. A
> single-minded blob of slime that can hunt with stunning speed. There are
> no known incidents of slime molds proving to be dangerous to humans, but
> Dallas was harboring more than a few dark secrets in 1973.
> It is sleeping.
>
> Decomposition lays waste: elements are understood to be liberated and the
> value is in this breaking down, giving off phosphorescing halos in an
> excess of incandescent energy illumining the dark, not a light dispelling
> it.
>
> > @go The Junkyard
>
> electron dense materials that reflect ultraviolet light, and can travel
> through space
>
> The Junkyard
> you stumble upon a junkyard shanty dwelling, littered as far as the eye
> can see with apparent rubbish. upreaped old school objects from before the
> time of facebook are scattered around, in various states of frankensteined
> dis/repair. monster mashups, with perhaps unclear purpose, rattle and
> shake emitting rusty greetings and demands:
> 'how do you feel?' 'what's up pal?' 'tell me what you're thinking'
> there are decaying lolcats and tired old memes lying in a heap to one
> side, exhaling fetid breath and unconvincing chuckles. you see a stained
> Viennese Mattress leaning up against an old ATM machine, which has vomited
> worthless piles of old currency, slowly turning into micronised plastic.
>
> you hear a sound on the breeze above the clatter. a wailing, perhaps?
> where the sound originates is unclear, the breeze being capricious in the
> junkyard.
> You see Subliminal Shift, shimmering shifting patch of light, dirt, and
> hollybot (reading The Situationist Times) here.
>
> 

Re: [-empyre-] Week 2 of the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Dale,

"... We’ve included projects in past FLEFF exhibitions that attempt to
disrupt this surveillance by flooding with bogus data. "

Let me try to elaborate: "bogus data," is that not essentially the very
opposite of a document? In the pre-digital universe (I do not use the word
"analog" because the word has developed an aura (or rather a stink) of
condescension in the hands of the digital champions. "Document" implied an
authenticity, a thereness. A "doctored document" is a relatively finite
object, a much more serious transgression than "false data." In the pre-digital
world, one can sustain a concept of "the original" even if only as an
ideal. In the digital world that distinction (between the unreal and real,
true and false) is diluted to the point of disappearance. We are surrounded
with false data like the air. We don't even notice it, as the events of the
last election in the States (and our president) clearly demonstrates. We
can call Trump our first full blown digital, not because he tweets a lot;
but because he makes no distinction between what is a fact (provable as a
document) and what is not. The forces fighting him are all pre-digital,
specifically the law (where documentary proof is an absolute value) and the
press (where fact-checking has a similar function). Let's see who will win.

One can see the same tension comparing camera obscure photography and
photoshop. In the former, the created image has a certain independence
because the power of of the lens or the photographer was never absolute.
Light moves in mysterious, not totally controllable ways, the photographer
makes errors, the image contains cracks, fissures, ambiguities, often
undreamt of by the photographer, into which the view can enter and his/her
mind is liberated by them. Photoshop gives the photographer absolute power,
in color, in focus, etc., etc. As a result, its value as document --and I
will claim as art-- diminishes and finally disappears like the grin of
the Cheshire Cat.

Digital data (and its codes) are the "capital," the controlling means
of production in the 21rst century. Its ownership is the center of
controlling power. The power it confers to its owner is infinitely greater
than the power the ownership of factories or railroads, etc., for example,
gave to 19th century tycoons. Because, finally, what it controls is not
only wealth (though that is undoubtedly a big motivating factor); but it
controls reality, *almost* absolutely, "liberating" it from facts.

"We’ve included projects in past FLEFF exhibitions that attempt to disrupt
this surveillance by flooding with bogus data."

Dale, unfortunately the surveillants are much more adept at "bogus data"
than the disruptors. I wonder a dadaist  disruption is enough in our
present condition. Basically, can one fight lies with lies? I think a
critical mind, seeing chaff separate from fact, is absolutely essential.

Ciao,
Murat


On Tue, Apr 17, 2018 at 5:39 AM, Garrett Lynch <garr...@asquare.org> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Murat
>
> I didn't say or suggest in any manner that code was neutral.  In fact if
> you read the last post I sent to the list you will see I referred to code
> in scenarios that don't rely on users e.g. generative, algorithmic etc.
> These both imply that code can't be neutral, can't be simply for
> communicating.
>
> What I said was that document, which I was defining as not the same as
> code, is a dumbed down term because it is often used to refer
> outwards/backwards to analogue media as a comparison in order to facilitate
> communicating - just like when we talk of our computer desktops they refer
> by analogy to a physical/'real' desktop.
>
> Hope this makes sense.
>
> regards
> Garrett
> _
> garr...@asquare.org
> http://www.asquare.org/
>
> On 16 Apr 2018, at 19:00, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Hi Garrett,
>
> "... Document in new media is simply an agreed dumbed down term for the
> benefit of communicating - similar to desktop as I mentioned and one of my
> own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'..."
>
> Your description has the kind of naivety that often plagued the thinking
> around digital technology. A code is not a neutral term denoting merely
> convenience ("simply... a dumbed down term for the benefit of
> communicating..." ) but a structure of knowledge (and potentially of power)
> with epistemological, social, political consequences. "Convenience" has
> often turned out to be a bait, a Trojan horse.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 11:

Re: [-empyre-] Week 2 of the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Dale,

" I didn’t understand Garrett to say that code is neutral. I understood him
to be saying that code does not constitute a document in the way that
documentary studies typically does.

I definitely agree that code is not neutral but a mode of power, which is
why I wanted to see what other thought about shifting ways that we think
about documentary from documents to operations."

In the digital world, the word "document, implying a physical entity," is
replaced by the more "universal" word "data." What is new about data and
differentiates it from document is that, unlike in the case of document,
data is (to use an image) a two sided mirror. While accessing data, one is
also being accessed, the accessor becoming a document/data herself/himself
-- becoming a commodity, capable to be manipulated. Of course, the whole
controversy about Facebook as a "business model" hinges on this difference.

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 3:00 PM, Dale Hudson <dmh2...@nyu.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Murat.
>
> I didn’t understand Garrett to say that code is neutral. I understood him
> to be saying that code does not constitute a document in the way that
> documentary studies typically does.
>
> I definitely agree that code is not neutral but a mode of power, which is
> why I wanted to see what other thought about shifting ways that we think
> about documentary from documents to operations.
>
> Best,
> Dale
>
>
> On Apr 16, 2018, at 22:00, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Garrett,
>
> "... Document in new media is simply an agreed dumbed down term for the
> benefit of communicating - similar to desktop as I mentioned and one of my
> own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'..."
>
> Your description has the kind of naivety that often plagued the thinking
> around digital technology. A code is not a neutral term denoting merely
> convenience ("simply... a dumbed down term for the benefit of
> communicating..." ) but a structure of knowledge (and potentially of power)
> with epistemological, social, political consequences. "Convenience" has
> often turned out to be a bait, a Trojan horse.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 11:12 AM, Dale Hudson <dmh2...@nyu.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Excellent point, Garrett.
>>
>> I’m interested in this shift from analogue to digital when document no
>> longer become as significant as code. I’m wondering whether it help move
>> discussion on documentary away from representation towards operation.
>>
>>
>> On Apr 16, 2018, at 13:07, Garrett Lynch <garr...@asquare.org> wrote:
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> For us, code is not a document.  Document suggests a singular 'thing' or
>> at least a group of things in proximity and closely held together.  The
>> nature of code is that it can't be thought of as a document, physical or
>> 'real' analogies don't work well.  Even the simplest type of code, say for
>> example HTML (which is technically not code but has some of the same
>> qualities) incorporates whole other 'documents' (e.g. images), parts of
>> other documents (e.g. classes and functions) and those can be distributed
>> anywhere when you factor in a network.  Document in new media is simply an
>> agreed dumbed down term for the benefit of communicating - similar to
>> desktop as I mentioned and one of my own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 6:34 PM, Dale Hudson <dmh2...@nyu.edu> wrote:
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Thanks, Luke and Garrett, for this discussion.
>>
>> I agree about the shortcomings in reducing operational to optical. If
>> anything, the foregrounding of the operation of coding and transcoding
>> should heighten our awareness of the mechanical and chemical operations to
>> capture and render analogue images.
>>
>> I’ve been interested in new media (for lack of a better term)
>> documentaries (also for lack of a better term) that instruct users in how
>> data is tagged, sorted, and rendered into information, as well as the
>> structural limitations to the kinds of information that can be rendered.
>>
>> I’ve also been interested in documentaries that emerge in different
>> iterations, conforming to the limitations of a particular venue but then
>> morphin

Re: [-empyre-] Week 2 of the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Garrett,

"... Document in new media is simply an agreed dumbed down term for the
benefit of communicating - similar to desktop as I mentioned and one of my
own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'..."

Your description has the kind of naivety that often plagued the thinking
around digital technology. A code is not a neutral term denoting merely
convenience ("simply... a dumbed down term for the benefit of
communicating..." ) but a structure of knowledge (and potentially of power)
with epistemological, social, political consequences. "Convenience" has
often turned out to be a bait, a Trojan horse.

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 11:12 AM, Dale Hudson  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Excellent point, Garrett.
>
> I’m interested in this shift from analogue to digital when document no
> longer become as significant as code. I’m wondering whether it help move
> discussion on documentary away from representation towards operation.
>
>
> On Apr 16, 2018, at 13:07, Garrett Lynch  wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> For us, code is not a document.  Document suggests a singular 'thing' or
> at least a group of things in proximity and closely held together.  The
> nature of code is that it can't be thought of as a document, physical or
> 'real' analogies don't work well.  Even the simplest type of code, say for
> example HTML (which is technically not code but has some of the same
> qualities) incorporates whole other 'documents' (e.g. images), parts of
> other documents (e.g. classes and functions) and those can be distributed
> anywhere when you factor in a network.  Document in new media is simply an
> agreed dumbed down term for the benefit of communicating - similar to
> desktop as I mentioned and one of my own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'.
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 6:34 PM, Dale Hudson  wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Thanks, Luke and Garrett, for this discussion.
>
> I agree about the shortcomings in reducing operational to optical. If
> anything, the foregrounding of the operation of coding and transcoding
> should heighten our awareness of the mechanical and chemical operations to
> capture and render analogue images.
>
> I’ve been interested in new media (for lack of a better term)
> documentaries (also for lack of a better term) that instruct users in how
> data is tagged, sorted, and rendered into information, as well as the
> structural limitations to the kinds of information that can be rendered.
>
> I’ve also been interested in documentaries that emerge in different
> iterations, conforming to the limitations of a particular venue but then
> morphing for other venues. This variation also seems important as a mode of
> instruction that teaches critical practices of “interacting” with digital
> media.
>
> In terms of documentary’s relationship with the visual, I have colleagues
> who work in documentary poetry and theater. For them written or audio
> testimony is a document.
>
> I am interested to know what people think (or whether people think) of
> code as a “document.”
>
> Best,
> Dale
>
>
>
> --
> regards
> Garrett
> _
> garr...@asquare.org
> http://www.asquare.org/
>
> Current events and soon:
>
> Real Virtuality The Networked Art of Garrett Lynch:
> http://realvirtuality.peripheralforms.com/
>
> A network of people who attended an exhibition and contributed to the
> creation of this work
> http://asquare.org/work/peoplenetwork/
>
> Pick up a postcard and participate at any of the following galleries:
> Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Bannister
> Gallery (Rhode Island, USA), Centro ADM (Mexico City, Mexico), Centro de
> Cultura Digital (Mexico City, Mexico), Gallery XY (Olomouc, Czech
> Republic), Gedok (Stuttgart, Germany), Guest Room (North Carolina, USA),
> Human Ecosystems (Rome, Italy), Kunst Museum (Stuttgart, Germany),
> Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City, Mexico), Le Wonder (Bagnolet,
> France), MUTE (Lisbon, Portugal), NYU Art Gallery (Abu Dhabi, United Arab
> Emirates), Open Signal (Portland, USA), Plymouth Arts Centre (Plymouth,
> England), The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art (Plymouth, England),
> Transfer Gallery (New York, USA), Upfor Gallery (Portland, USA), Watermans
> (London, England), Wilhelmspalais (Stuttgart, Germany), WOWA (Riccione,
> Italy), ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany)
>
> Best of Luck with the Wall (variant) @ European Media Art Festival, Report
> - notes from reality (Osnabrueck, Germany) 18/04 - 21/05/2018
> https://www.emaf.de/en/index.html
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> 

Re: [-empyre-] body noise as (non)sense

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"That is, to generate a whole lot of language/*description around the locus
of the noise that resists being fixed*? Perhaps this is where Christof's
proposal of noise as a hyphenating agent might productively come in?"

I agree with you, Caitlin, I think Christof is struggling with the same
thing.

Murat


On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 2:03 PM, Caitlin Woolsey 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> In his writings, Henri Chopin correlates the particular modernity of the
> period after World War II with an operative assumption of plurality. He
> sets this plurality (semantic, sonic, visual) against expression (artistic
> or otherwise) as meaning. His work, I think, is not so much against
> language as such as it is resistant to conceptions of meaning per se. You
> can listen to a number of his sound works, which he called “audio-poèmes,”
> on Ubuweb: https://ubusound.memoryoftheworld.org/chopin_
> henri/Chopin-Henri_Vibrespace.mp3
>
> In "Vibrespace" from 1963, the artist constructs a sonic atmosphere that
> engulfs the listener with rhythmic electronic pulses, rising bubbles, soft
> clicks and hisses. The bodily trace remains: we hear the huff of the
> artist’s intake of breath, and can identify the wet clack of his lips. Yet
> machinic-sounding elements and natural evocations of wind and water are
> juxtaposed with the vocalic remnants. In this particular audio-poem, the
> listener experiences a sense of containment. Is it as if we have been
> transported into a subterranean or underwater space, dark and enclosed, and
> the auditory trajectory of this piece reflects back to us the interplay
> between organic noises, the constructed soundspace in which we find
> ourselves (like a submarine), and the protestations of our own senses that
> may not find this kind of “poem” particularly pleasurable.
>
> What is the poetics or “sense” of a work like "Vibrespace," which is
> composed of the voice—but a voice that does not ostensibly speak as voice?
> What about the sonic envelope it creates, which is evocative even as it is
> impossible to fully locate? Chopin pursued what he called “mobile
> signs”—positioned against the concrete (albeit metaphorical) stance “in the
> beginning was the Word.” And yet I wonder: is a sound poem like Vibrespace
> in fact closer to the biblical formulation, in which expression—the Word,
> meaning—is made flesh, instantiated in the materiality of the human body.
> Might its “nonsense” voice—scrambled and layered and distended through the
> artist’s interventions and the tape recorder; and also constructed through
> recording non-vocal bodily vibrations—convey meanings insofar as it is
> created from and elicits a kind of embodied, haptic materiality?
>
> What about the impulse to interpret noise, to understand it in relation to
> human experience/analysis/effects (as Murat identified)?
>
> And how do we talk about noise and sound work like "Vibrespace" that seems
> to both elude and invite the impulse to describe or analyze or locate? I
> grapple with this problem as someone who is trying to write about sound
> works. Is there any way to describe them that doesn't mediate, compromise,
> mislead? That is, to generate a whole lot of language/description around
> the locus of the noise that resists being fixed? Perhaps this is where
> Christof's proposal of noise as a hyphenating agent might productively come
> in?
>
>
>
>
> Caitlin Woolsey
> Yale University
> PhD candidate in History of Art
> www.caitlinwoolsey.com
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] why if?

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Caitlin,

"A small point, following Murat and Julien’s exchange of a few days
ago, I wonder also about how noise might produce disorientation as a
positive effect.

This goes to the Situationist practice of dérive through the urban
landscape as a means of processing the sensory (visual, aural,
tactile) input of the city in such as a way as to disorient, as a
means to open up new ways of navigating through the world—..."

Are you familiar with Frank O'Hara's magnificent poem "Sleeping On the
Wing" where, walking on the Manhattan street, the speaker's mind wanders
from one thing to another, spun by multiple objects, the honking of the
car, the pigeon, the doors's slam, including the wind. The poem does very
close to, exactly what you are talking about. Here's just a bit of it:
"... 'Sleep!/ O for a long sound sleep and so forget it!'/ that one flies,
soaring above the shoreless city,/ veering upward from the pavement as a
pigeon/ does when a car honks or a door slams, the door/ of dreams, life
perpetuated in parti-colored loves/ and beautiful lies all in different
languages.

Fear drops away too, like the cement, and and you/ are over the Atlantic.
Where is Spain? where is/ who?..."

II.
"It seems like you are after something similar, Murat, when you
describe your poetry as reaching for the point in which language is
broken down so that meaning is rendered ambiguous—not erased, but
rather (as you wrote) to “shoot in multiple directions.”

The last part of this quotation is true for my poetry in the last fifteen
years or so: "shoot in multiple direction." Not a poetry of statements, but
of movement.  Language, meaning become pure motion, what I call in
*Eda *anthology, "a
poetry of motion." A lot of translations in *Eda: An Anthology of
Contemporary Turkish Poetry *and the poems *The Spiritual Life of
Replicants* and *Animals of Dawn* in their totalities embody this poetry.

Ciao,
Murat



On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 1:51 PM, Caitlin Woolsey <caitlin.wool...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> A small point, following Murat and Julien’s exchange of a few days
> ago, I wonder also about how noise might produce disorientation as a
> positive effect.
>
> This goes to the Situationist practice of dérive through the urban
> landscape as a means of processing the sensory (visual, aural,
> tactile) input of the city in such as a way as to disorient, as a
> means to open up new ways of navigating through the world—both
> literally as well as creatively and symbolically
> (https://goo.gl/images/sM7TmE). Or even détournement, appropriating
> image/text material and turning it back on itself--not to eliminate
> meaning, or to eliminate noise--but rather to produce a kind of visual
> or semantic feedback, which in turn would be more free, more complex,
> more heterogeneous (at least in theory).
>
> It seems like you are after something similar, Murat, when you
> describe your poetry as reaching for the point in which language is
> broken down so that meaning is rendered ambiguous—not erased, but
> rather (as you wrote) to “shoot in multiple directions.”
>
>
> caitlin
>
>
> Caitlin R. Woolsey
> Yale University
> PhD candidate in History of Art
> www.caitlinwoolsey.com
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:17 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> > Julian,
> >
> > I am essentially a writer, a poet,, an essayist on art (photography and
> film), poetry and translation, and a translator from Turkish poetry. Though
> indirectly, my writing is very much involved on the effects of technology,
> particularly digital technology, on human consciousness. For instance my
> poem of 2012 The Spiritual Life of Replicants (referring to the replicants
> in the film Blade Runner) revolves around the question what finally
> separates, if anything, the human from the android, particularly if the
> android develops a consciousness of mortality, as it does in the film. Or
> in my next 2016 poem Animals of Dawn, I focus on Hamlet, on Hamlet's
> "delay" to execute his father's revenge expeditiously. The poem suggests
> that Hamlet exists in a different time space from other characters, the
> move from one zone to the other being extremely difficult. The ghost's
> ambiguous injunction to Hamlet to kill his uncle exists in one time zone.
> The poem ends with the question: "If Shakespeare had photoshopped the
> ghost's image, would it have appeared clearer?," which is the last line of
> the sixty-five page poem. Both The Spiritual Life and Animals of Dawn are
> published by Talisman House.
> >
> &g

Re: [-empyre-] Fragments of Noise, part 3

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Christof,

I want to join your exploration for a fluid, shifting noise where it never
calcifies, solidifies into an authoritarian solidness. It all depends I
think on the alertness of the mind looking at it and is able to shift leg
in mid motion. One specific passage you just quoted may be a way to suggest
how that may happen:

"Henri Chopin describes burning a bag in which he had placed all of his
poems as his first poetic act. I¹m interested in the double negative at
play in that statement; the poetics of an act versus the poems on the
page; enacting an erasure; the wordless gesture overpowering the wordful
pages."

Henri Chopin's "act" is a poem ("noise" in that positive sense) until the
moment it is enacted (in other words, before the surprise, until the "zero"
moment of its existence). Then, it becomes a "sound," a poetics of
performance. As suddenly, eliciting an intense moment of loss and an ebbing
away of language as time, the burnt poems become noise, lost, receding (in
memory) and radically undefinable.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 4:35 PM, Christof Migone  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Nice to see this flurry of activity. Difficult to know where to start,
> what thread to pick up. It¹s tempting to refer to this plethora as noise,
> but, aside from being too facile, there¹s a lingering fear that this would
> be read as dismissive rather than laudatory‹the latter is intended.
> Despite the fact that we have been articulating thoughtful and rigorous
> reversals and layerings of the term Œnoise¹ here, the negative attribute
> is abated, but not eradicated. Its hold is strong. Perhaps it¹s simply a
> corollary of its common usage‹the ease with which it can appear in untold
> contexts. And perhaps that surface-level currency speaks to the richness
> and slipperiness of the term. In other words, it¹s both spectacular and
> spectral (i.e. fore- and back- ground, as mentioned in part 2).
>
> ---
>
> Henri Chopin describes burning a bag in which he had placed all of his
> poems as his first poetic act. I¹m interested in the double negative at
> play in that statement; the poetics of an act versus the poems on the
> page; enacting an erasure; the wordless gesture overpowering the wordful
> pages.
>
> ---
>
> Caitlin: ³And how do we talk about noise and sound work like "Vibrespace"
> that seems to both elude and invite the impulse to describe or analyze or
> locate? I grapple with this problem as someone who is trying to write
> about sound works. Is there any way to describe them that doesn't mediate,
> compromise, mislead? That is, to generate a whole lot of
> language/description around the locus of the noise that resists being
> fixed?² Is this problematic particular to sound works, or all art works?
> Either way, any such activity, from ekphrasis to interpretation to
> translation will do all of these (Œmediate, compromise, mislead¹), if not
> more. By definition and by necessity. It seems to me that the opening
> (reversing the funneling that the act of description implies) lies in
> finding writing strategies that downplay the authorial voice, the
> historification impulse, the canonization drive, the declarative thrust.
> Expanding rather than reducing. Unfixing the notion that writing is fixed.
> By extension, one could posit that noise is ubiquitous, part and parcel of
> event, acts, gestures, objects, subjects, etc. It¹s the etcetera. It¹s the
> etcetera that resists and exceeds the Œit is¹ of this sentence.
>
> ---
>
> If noise as hyphenating agent is to be a productive notion it must be able
> to fold in on itself, an infinite konvolut. Perhaps akin to the ³sidelong
> glance² Wittgenstein mentions in sect. 274 of his Philosophical
> Investigations: ³Of course, saying that the word ³red² ³refers to² rather
> than ³signifies² something private does not help us in the least to grasp
> its function; but it is the more psychologically apt expression for a
> particular experience in doing philosophy. It is as if, when I uttered the
> word, I cast a sidelong glance at my own colour impression [in other
> translation, it reads: a sidelong glance at the private sensation], as it
> were, in order to say to myself: I know all right what I mean by the
> word.²
> The ability to retreat into a private language. To invoke it
> surreptitiously. Noise hyphen I, noise hyphen you, noise hyphen ad
> infinitum.
>
> ---
>
> Christof
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Fragments of Noise, part 2

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Christophe,

Noise is the outer/aether ranges of language. Silence is the quantum jump.

Ciao,
Murat

On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 6:44 PM, Christof Migone  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> I appreciate Murat¹s formulation that "silence is the Œunreachable' zero
> point of noise, Œpart' of noise.² My only question is whether noise in
> this instance is interchangeable with sound? Or, is noise here (and
> perhaps frequently elsewhere) a way to get to an expanded field of the
> sonic?
>
> ---
>
> From Fred Moten¹s Black and Blur, pp.63-64: ³While Adorno requires
> recognition of the distinction between phonic substance or sound and
> musical material, Gould demands reduction of the tactile experience as
> well so that he might conceptualize what he can¹t imagine, imagine what he
> cannot hear. It is, however, by way of ecstatic singing and humming,
> irruptively involuntary movements of/and conduction, the supposedly
> degraded and degrading accompaniments of the pianistic utterance, that
> Gould achieves a certain content or essential music whose outward
> manifestation is the irreducible sound of the piano and his irrepressible
> phono-choreographic accompaniment. That ensemble of
> accompaniment‹composition¹s disruptively constitutive innermost extremity,
> the native fugue-state of being-composed‹is essential to that content; it
> is its condition of possibility. It is the embarrassment not simply of
> music¹s irreducible materiality but of the origin and end of music¹s
> fantastic transcendence of that materiality in that materiality that is
> the source of what we might call Gould¹s performance anxiety, which is
> allayed and relayed in his performance of and through his love affair with
> the mediating force of forced microphonic rendition and stereophonic
> audition. This is all to say that Gould¹s recordings bear the trace, and
> Girard¹s film insists upon, the centrality of visual, tactile, and aural
> experience‹a performativity that improvises through the opposition of
> media and the immediate‹to the abstract truth in music. By way of fantasy,
> the recordings and the film document this unconcealment. Such
> animateriality always verges on scandal, whether it takes the form of
> discomposing song or abducted listening.²
>
>
> Moten¹s animateriality seems the kind of (noisy) agent that lurks as
> reminder/remainder to be a generative way to (back- but also fore-)ground
> noise. An animateriality that ensures that the feedback loop of
> referentiality always derails, even if just by a byte.
>
> In the postface (titled Emit) of recently published selection of Erin
> Moure¹s poetry (Wesleyan, 2017), Planetary Noise, Moure mentions the word
> Œtexterior¹‹I can¹t think of a better pairing than Œanimateriality¹ with
> Œtexterior.¹ Here¹s more context for Moure¹s neologism (I presume its
> hers) (p. 165-6): "In poetry, texturalities, textualities, textscapes,
> texteriors generate and are generated, thrall and intercalate. Anger and
> despair are not alien to poetry either, for poetry is not Œmeaning' but is
> this Œworking,' this formae vitae in which the individual poet¹s mind and
> hands are plural with other poets and all are called to 'work at the
> limits of signification.' Not entropic but amplificatory."
>
> ---
>
>
> Fred Moten, during the Q & A which follows his March 21 lecture ³The Gift
> of Corruption² (https://vimeo.com/261854255 ‹ around the one hour mark)
> writes on the blackboard: sinn + sin = nonsense.
>
> --
>
> Christof
>
>
> >
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] why if?

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Julian,

I am essentially a writer, a poet,, an essayist on art (photography and
film), poetry and translation, and a translator from Turkish poetry. Though
indirectly, my writing is very much involved on the effects of technology,
particularly digital technology, on human consciousness. For instance my
poem of 2012 *The Spiritual Life of Replicants *(referring to the
replicants in the film *Blade Runner*) revolves around the question what
finally separates, *if anything*, the human from the android, particularly
if the android develops a consciousness of mortality, as it does in the
film. Or in my next 2016 poem *Animals of Dawn, *I focus on *Hamlet*, on
Hamlet's "delay" to execute his father's revenge expeditiously. The poem
suggests that Hamlet exists in a different time space from other
characters, the move from one zone to the other being extremely difficult.
The ghost's ambiguous injunction to Hamlet to kill his uncle exists in one
time zone. The poem ends with the question: "If Shakespeare had
photoshopped the ghost's image, would it have appeared clearer?," which is
the last line of the sixty-five page poem. Both *The Spiritual Life*
and *Animals
of Dawn* are published by Talisman House.

My poetics is very much involved with the ideas of silence and space
(particularly empty space). In my poetry often words are broken down,
language deconstructed, meaning becoming ambiguous and blurred --in other
words, moving toward a state of noise-- to arrive than empty space where
language loses its its linearity and shoots (in the reader's mind) in
multiple directions.

Julian, I hope this is helpful.

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 2:38 PM, Julien Ottavi <jul...@apo33.org> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Hi Murat
>
> that sounds interesting, do you have any examples or links to some of your
> explorations? I am really interested!
>
> you could listen some noise music produced by ants, stratosphere's
> electromagnetic storms, electromagnetic "inaudible" sounds from cities and
> machines...etc http://fibrrrecords.net/doku.php?id=open_recordings
>
> thanks
>
> Julien
>
> Le 26/03/2018 à 19:26, Murat Nemet-Nejat a écrit :
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
>
> Very interesting post, Julien. My interest in noise is an attempt to
> liberate it from the subjectivity that humans impose on it, defining it
> only as it relates to them. I want to explore "noise's autonomy." Your
> questions in your post also seem to point to the same direction.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 1:00 PM, Julien Ottavi <jul...@apo33.org> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> "Noise: Disorientation, Contamination, and (Non)Communication"
>>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I was just thinking of this subject and I was wondering why do we present
>> noise as a negative concept?
>>
>> Why if noise helped us to direct ourself in our surroundings
>> (Disorientation)?
>> why if noise was a not a virus (contamination) but a way to cure people
>> and nature? or if it was a way to communicate with the universe and the
>> nature?
>> Why if noise was a way to communicate and the signal (being the
>> information) was not the only way of communicated (as in the communication
>> theory)?
>>
>> Also what is noise? In which domain, theory or practices?
>> Are we talking about theory of communication, artistic practices?
>> Are we talking about noise music? or nature's noises such as wind or
>> thunder?
>> If we are talking about music, what kind of noises? white noise, brown
>> noise, pink noise? or saturated sounds? "Concrete" music sounds such as
>> everyday life sounds: squeaky doors, fans, trains, cars, planes, cooking
>> sounds...etc?
>>
>> We don't have to answer all of those questions during this week but at
>> least maybe we could clarify some of them or express what's our interest in
>> this field.
>>
>> For instance, in my case, I am a composer, musician, sound artist...etc.
>> I am using noise-sound in my music but I also make noise music. Noise music
>> does have a positive impact in my life not only in term of production or as
>> a performer but also in the listening of it, specially in concert situation
>> with loudspeakers and sub-woofers to really feeling it.
>> I am also finishing my P.h.D and one chapter is dedicated to this
>> question of the practices of noise music from the perspectives of those who
>> makes it and not only from the academic or the listener point of 

Re: [-empyre-] Fragments of Noise

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"³The word silence is still a noise² (Georges Bataille)"

The relationship of silence to noise (silence is the "unreachable" zero
point of noise, "part" of noise, as the arrival point is to the reaching
towards in Zeno's paradox or the position of zero as the limit in Calculus.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 9:04 AM, Stirling Newberry <
stirling.newbe...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> "Winnie-the-Pooh That buzzing noise means something. Now, the only reason
> for making a buzzing noise that I know of is because you are…a bee! And the
> only reason for being a bee is to make honey. And the only reason for
> making honey is so I can eat it."
>
> Not all references to noise are unexplainable,  even a child's book
> realizes that a "noise"  is, i*n *fact, understandable as belonging to a
> set.
>
> The clearest of this with volcanoes,  who have 2 distinct categories of
> wavelike structure -  sine wave structure,  which is the normalized wave -
> and noise like structure which means that the film is tearing out new
> cisterns in preparation for eruption. The 2nd class is predictable,  and
> without which there would be no volcano, an sich.  So while there are
> numerous examples of "noise"  as unpredictable,  there are at least some,
> including when we were children,  which point in different directions.
> There are examples in  Natural Geoscience of how noise-like structures
> predict eruptions.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 8:38 PM Christof Migone <cmig...@uwo.ca> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> ³Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, we¹d like to remind you that we don¹t
>> applaud in this here place where we¹re working. So, restrain your
>> applause. If you must applaud wait until the end of the set and it won¹t
>> even matter then. The reason is that we are interrupted by your noise. In
>> fact, don¹t even take any drinks, or no cash register ringing, etcetera.
>> I¹d like to introduce the musicians...²
>>
>> - Charles Mingus, intro to ³Folk Forms, No. 1² on the album Charles Mingus
>> Presents Charles Mingus (1960).
>>
>> What is remarkable about the above is that the audience is imaginary, this
>> is a studio recording where Mingus wanted his musicians to play like they
>> played live. The noise of the audience is silent. Noise imaginary. So even
>> when absent, ³noise is being asked to do a lot of work.² (David X.
>> Borgonjon, March 8 post to empyre)
>>
>> (https://drjazzdotlive.wordpress.com/2016/02/11/
>> classic-revisited-charles-m
>> ingus-presents-charles-minguscandid/
>> <https://drjazzdotlive.wordpress.com/2016/02/11/classic-revisited-charles-mingus-presents-charles-minguscandid/>
>> )
>>
>> ---
>>
>> The first sentence of Bring the Noise by Claire Bishop and Boris Groys
>> used to go as follows: ³As well as bring noted for their avant-garde
>> painting, the Futurists¹ performances were legendary for their intent to
>> provoke and scandalise the public.² Unfortunately, the typo has since been
>> fixed: ³As well as being noted for their avant-garde painting, the
>> Futurists¹ performances were legendary for their intent to provoke and
>> scandalise the public.²
>> (http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/bring-noise)
>>
>> ---
>>
>> There is a link to be made between failure and noise, and thereby the
>> aesthetics of both.
>>
>> Pushing that further, perhaps noise is the quintessential hyphenating
>> agent, it impedes purity, resists totalization (Serre¹s Parasite comes to
>> mind).
>>
>> Can it therefore be both a human notion which functions as an arbitrary
>> category (as pointed out by Murat Nemet-Nejat in his post from March 21)
>> and also one that covers ³the fluctuations of the universe that are beyond
>> our complete understanding² (Nicholas Knouf, March 22 post)? The latter
>> formulation easily collapses into the former since it relies on the limits
>> of our understanding to determine what lies beyond it.
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Caitlin Woolsey brought up the noises of the body in her March 9 post.
>> That is where noise appeared first for me. As a non-musician using sound
>> as material, the body is a readymade instrument. One of its most
>> interesting characteristic is that it cannot be played, it cannot be
>> controlled. Well, at least some of its functions cannot. What I mean is
>> that the 

Re: [-empyre-] why if?

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Very interesting post, Julien. My interest in noise is an attempt to
liberate it from the subjectivity that humans impose on it, defining it
only as it relates to them. I want to explore "noise's autonomy." Your
questions in your post also seem to point to the same direction.

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 1:00 PM, Julien Ottavi  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> "Noise: Disorientation, Contamination, and (Non)Communication"
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> I was just thinking of this subject and I was wondering why do we present
> noise as a negative concept?
>
> Why if noise helped us to direct ourself in our surroundings
> (Disorientation)?
> why if noise was a not a virus (contamination) but a way to cure people
> and nature? or if it was a way to communicate with the universe and the
> nature?
> Why if noise was a way to communicate and the signal (being the
> information) was not the only way of communicated (as in the communication
> theory)?
>
> Also what is noise? In which domain, theory or practices?
> Are we talking about theory of communication, artistic practices?
> Are we talking about noise music? or nature's noises such as wind or
> thunder?
> If we are talking about music, what kind of noises? white noise, brown
> noise, pink noise? or saturated sounds? "Concrete" music sounds such as
> everyday life sounds: squeaky doors, fans, trains, cars, planes, cooking
> sounds...etc?
>
> We don't have to answer all of those questions during this week but at
> least maybe we could clarify some of them or express what's our interest in
> this field.
>
> For instance, in my case, I am a composer, musician, sound artist...etc. I
> am using noise-sound in my music but I also make noise music. Noise music
> does have a positive impact in my life not only in term of production or as
> a performer but also in the listening of it, specially in concert situation
> with loudspeakers and sub-woofers to really feeling it.
> I am also finishing my P.h.D and one chapter is dedicated to this question
> of the practices of noise music from the perspectives of those who makes it
> and not only from the academic or the listener point of view.
>
> So I am wondering where people stand with those concepts? Beyond your
> background what's is your interest in the subject and from which
> perspective are you talking about?
>
> best
>
> Julien
>
>
> --
> JULIEN OTTAVI
> Composer, Artist, curator and PhD student on new music and network
>
> http://www.noiser.org
> http://www.apo33.org
> http://www.fibrrrecords.net
> http://www.apodio.org
> http://bruitbrut.lautre.net
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Week 3 Introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"Perhaps we are partially in agreement. I use the term noise to refer to
the fluctuations of the universe that are beyond our complete
understanding. And I believe that there will never be complete
understanding...we will never be able to predict, for example, the exact
movements of every leaf on a tree in the breeze, the exact behavior of our
cat, the exact results of a decision by a premier. So "letting noise be
noise" means learning to engage with these unpredictable aspects of the
world."

Hi Nicholas,

Thank you for your response. Reading it, I noticed that there is an
implicit equivalence between "comprehension" and various kinds of
"predictions," in other words, control (scientific prediction, "fall of a
leaf" or "fall of a sparrow") or power (behavioral prediction, data mining,
etc.). Why should such an equivalence, implicit or explicit, necessarily
exist? Can noise be something, a *reality*, not only beyond human
comprehension; but beyond control. Noise, something with its autonomous
existence, maybe (and that is the controversial issue) beyond human speech?
Can noise be what is beyond speech; in other words, ultimately, in its
absolute point, can noise be equivalent to silence (not control or
comprehension)? Is that not what John Cage is saying?

Nicholas, I think the series of quotes you have given at the end of you
post are all in different ways moving towards silence.

Ciao,
Murat

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 12:35 AM, Nicholas Knouf <nkn...@wellesley.edu>
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Murat, and others,
>
> Perhaps we are partially in agreement. I use the term noise to refer to
> the fluctuations of the universe that are beyond our complete
> understanding. And I believe that there will never be complete
> understanding...we will never be able to predict, for example, the exact
> movements of every leaf on a tree in the breeze, the exact behavior of our
> cat, the exact results of a decision by a premier. So "letting noise be
> noise" means learning to engage with these unpredictable aspects of the
> world. Again, quoting Serres in *Genesis*:
>
> "Noise is a turbulence, it is order and disorder at the same time, order
> revolving on itself through repetition and redundancy, disorder through
> chance occurrences, through the drawing of lots at the crossroads, and
> through the global meandering, unpredictable and crazy." (59)
>
> Or:
>
> "A philosophy of communications conceives the message as order, meaning or
> unit, but it also con­ceives the background noise from which it emerges."
> (110)
>
> Or,
>
> "The cosmos is not a structure, it is a pure multiplicity of ordered
> multiplicities and pure multiplicities. It is the global basis of all
> structures, it is the background noise of all form and information, it is
> the milky noise of the whole of our messages gathered together. We must
> give it a new name, definitely: it is a mixture, tiger-striped, motley,
> mottled, zebra­ streaked, variegated, and I don't know what all, it is a
> mix or a crasis, it is a mixed aggregate, it is an intermittence. The most
> global concept, by good fortune and freedom, is not a unitary one. Order is
> never more than an island or an archipelago. In the midst of the multiple,
> one finds universe-isles." (111-112)
>
> Best,
>
> Nick
>
>
> On 3/20/2018 5:57 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
>
> Nicholas,
>
> "Noise" is not something that exists in the world. It is a quality *we 
> *ascribe
> to the world defined by the degree of our comprehension. So what does
> "letting noise be noise" mean exactly?
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:56 PM, Nicholas Knouf <nkn...@wellesley.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> Fascinating thoughts so far, I'll see if I can add some noisy
>> interferences to the conversation.
>>
>> I'm with Michel Serres when he writes in *Genesis* that noise is the
>> background of the universe, and that the task is to describe how the
>> *rare* moments of order are made manifest. Thus while there are
>> arguments that noise is fundamentally anti-establishment + that it needs to
>> be corralled and controlled + that it is fundamentally disruptive in a
>> positive sense + that it is painful and dangerous + that we should
>> celebrate it in the sounds of warfare + that we can control it + that we
>> can easily separate a signal out of it + that we should valor

Re: [-empyre-] Week 3 Introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Nicholas,

"Noise" is not something that exists in the world. It is a quality *we *ascribe
to the world defined by the degree of our comprehension. So what does
"letting noise be noise" mean exactly?

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 4:56 PM, Nicholas Knouf 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello everyone,
>
> Fascinating thoughts so far, I'll see if I can add some noisy
> interferences to the conversation.
>
> I'm with Michel Serres when he writes in *Genesis* that noise is the
> background of the universe, and that the task is to describe how the
> *rare* moments of order are made manifest. Thus while there are arguments
> that noise is fundamentally anti-establishment + that it needs to be
> corralled and controlled + that it is fundamentally disruptive in a
> positive sense + that it is painful and dangerous + that we should
> celebrate it in the sounds of warfare + that we can control it + that we
> can easily separate a signal out of it + that we should valorize the
> "natural" above it + that it has more information than signal + that it can
> break us out of cybernetic ruts...I agree with David that we ask a lot of
> noise. I'm content to try and follow the machinations of noise as a
> material property of the world, seeing how it continually exceeds our
> abilities to pin it down.
>
> One of the things that I've written about in the past is the role of noise
> in financial markets, which was published in my book *How Noise Matters
> to Finance*. The "matters" part of the title matters, drawing from Jane
> Bennett and Karen Barad. I followed how noise (sonic and informatic) came
> to be a matter of concern to finance, as financial economists realized that
> they had to take into account the noisy behavior of markets that exceeded
> their bounded equations. Thus the shouts of the trading floor could be used
> to predict how the market might move, or algorithms could attempt to
> disrupt other algorithms through spoofing and creating fake, noisy trades.
> A few years ago there were some left accelerationist arguments that
> suggested that the noisy behaviors of algorithms would potentially cause
> the markets to fail, spiraling downward, thus precipitating the development
> of whatever comes "after" capitalism. But as I looked into the markets more
> deeply, I saw that for every algorithm that tries to pull the market down,
> there's another that tries to pull it back up. So every automated "crash"
> of the market is followed by an automated recovery. Noise can't be counted
> on to disrupt the market, as the market is fundamentally built upon a
> negative feedback (stabilizing) system that was championed by Norbert
> Wiener so many decades ago, as opposed to a positive feedback system
> (disruptive) that would potentially spiral downwards or upwards out of
> control. Noise in the market becomes something that can be fed upon in
> small, minuscule, perturbatory doses.
>
> Of course noise has its uses, as many of us know and have been involved in
> over the past decades. Sometimes these uses are for liberatory ends, and
> sometimes they are not. We can shout and be disruptive and be heard. We can
> upload alternative ideas and obfuscate. We can let the speaker cabinet
> rattle our bones as we are lost in euphoria of the electronic sounds, or
> lose our hearing as we are blasted by the LRAD. We can create hoaxes or
> fake news. We can get a reporter to say that Dow will pay for the Bhopal
> disaster, or that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or that a certain
> pizza joint in Washington, DC is a den of villainy. I think it behooves us,
> during a moment where many call for "authenticity" and for a distinction
> between "fake" and "real" news, to ask what might be lost as we try and
> scrub our media of noise. Who gets to make the distinction between signal
> and noise? What powers are reinforced as we aim for authenticity? This is
> not a call for anything goes relativism. Rather it's a call for skepticism
> in the face of attempts to stabilize the boat. Noise has a way of
> overflowing it. Might we be better served in learning ourselves, and
> educating others, in how to follow the machinations of noise?
>
> Best,
>
> Nick
>
>
> On 3/19/2018 11:05 PM, Noralyn Neumark wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
>
> Hi Junting and all
>
> Thanks for inviting me into this fascinating discussion. I’d like to
> provide a bit of background to my thinking and work with noise — from the
> 90s to present day.
>
> (Sorry the formatting seems to have gone a bit dirty… no sooner spoken of
> than enacted!)
>
> Noise first appealed to me as a dirty antidote to ‘modern’ aesthetics of
> clean, bright, white, mono-cultural future and all the ecological and
> political problems that has evoked. In the sound world that included the
> early digital promises of ‘clean’ 

Re: [-empyre-] Why Noise?

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi xname, very good post>

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 4:19 PM, xname  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Dear all,
>
> before I shoot another thread off, I wanted to share some reflections
> following David's thought provoking post with related responses.
>
> Regarding the relation, or ratio, noise to signal, I think this is a
> matter for physicists and engineers, along with media theorists. The
> distinction dilutes to different ends, of course. As in regards to artists,
> I believe since Man Ray's photo of the DUST on Duchamp's Large Glass, the
> position of noise and dust in art has been established. The distinction
> between carrier and content brings ideas that come from communication
> theory and semiotics. When I was writing about the semiotics of
> audiovisuals and the animation of drawings, back in 2002, I had to notice
> that for a sign to communicate any meaning in time, there is always a
> sequence of signs producing nonsense. Every sign contains nonsense if we
> break it down to size. For signification to occur, there is always
> something emerging between interpretation and miscommunication, object and
> reference.
>
> So the idea of encrypting communication into that which is human but not
> machine understandable is very contemporary, as we wouldn't have thought,
> not so long ago, that we'd have to prove we are not robots on a everyday
> basis. The question of censorship on the one hand, and this idea of noise
> as potentially subversive. Why should we consider noise as subversive?
>
> Is noise ontologically anti establishment?
>
> How often are media making noise, without actually informing?
>
> Luigi Russolo, in his futurist manifesto dated 1913 (The Art of Noise),
> connects the encounter of noise and art to the machine:
>
> "Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the
> invention of the machine, noise was born. And so was born the concept of
> sound as a thing in itself, distinct and independent of life, and the
> result was music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real one, an
> inviolable and sacred world."
>
> QUESTION
> Listen to this:
> https://soundcloud.com/xname/spectropticon-raw
> Is it SIGNAL or NOISE?
>
> Maybe we could think of something hidden, whose voice is unheard, or
> cancelled, the marginals, including those marginalised and those living at
> the borders, all that which is not accepted by society, that which is
> overlooked, a floating eye avoiding the gaze of the 'home' of the homeless,
> or the screams of those who haven't been accounted for?
>
> This metaphor of that which is there but is not considered important
> enough (to BE SIGNAL), becomes, then, NOISE, that noise we want to amplify,
> taking it to the foreground, we want its narrative to stand out, telling us
> the stories which are unfolding at the interstices of the MACHINE (social,
> mechanical, electronic, affective, semiotic, etc).
>
> We want to listen to the sound of the mechanism, we want to make it
> excessive because we have been told that we shouldn't pay attention, that
> it's annoyance, that it doesn't mean much because it's NOISE, nothing else
> than NOISE, and should be ignored.
>
> Instead, we want to see if it there's SOMETHING IN IT FOR US. And we want
> to hear it clear and LOUD.
>
>
> Yours truly,
> xname
>
>
> --
> phantasmata and illusions
>
> @oracle666
> http://xname.cc
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] -empyre- pyres and family romances

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Ana, I had posted a response t your post of a few days ago. I wonder if it
got lost with your own post.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 10:41 AM, Ana Valdés  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Dear all I didn’t want to seem blasé or disappointed when I posted about
> my deception or disappointing for the lack of answers. As an old -empyrean
> :) I do remember months of intense exchange and months of silence or
> tiredness. But it’s as life with some friends or colleagues you keep in
> touch with others you grow apart.
> As a writer without colleagues my work is a solitary one for me virtuality
> has been a way to substitute presence.
> I am happy Lauren found Stumble Upon enjoyable the only time I was obliged
> to leave a forum it was when Howard Rheingold managed Electric Minds. It
> was hundreds of posts per week and everyone was expected to post long and
> elaborated reflexions. It was too tough for me, in despite for being an
> avid chatter and writer.
> Ana
>
> tis 13 feb. 2018 kl. 12:24 skrev Johannes Birringer <
> johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk>:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> dear all
>>
>> I am also confused about the less than moderate comments received, and I
>> had already exchanged a puzzled letter with Simon Taylor down at Waiheke
>> Island, who I felt was insulted, and feeling ashamed a bit that I am/I was
>> not more outspoken to express my discomfort with this list that had given
>> great impetus, many times, and also caused disappointment at other times.
>>
>> That was really what I tried to say, I was not advocating passivity at
>> all, dear Renate, I was suggesting (and yes, I am older and perhaps, like
>> Ana, tired of lists and social media, or like Simon wonder, @youtoo, about
>> the interesting and puzzling rejections that are floating, around the
>> field, before 7th Seal, or death’s chess player interrupts as it happened
>> last week, unpoetically but terminally; having wanted, in my last post, to
>> pay my respects and gratitude to Melinda and Christina and the earlier
>> artistic and vibrant intellectual exchanges here and on other lists that I
>> like (un-moderated, like Netbehavior, without the need of “editorial
>> boards”, a need never brought forward for discussion here to us who own
>> this list and ought to have a say whether we want it) – so not having
>> actually wanted to say I am overburdened by emails, or having no more time
>> for this – on the contrary:
>>
>> I was trying to ask, others here, whether we can eventually stop fooling
>> ourselves, about the 5775 or 2175 followers or subscribers or reactors not
>> reacting, if in fact this month only a handful of subscribers bothered to
>> write, what nine, or twelve?  so why ask about a listserv and how to
>> justify itself for a “new era,” when Simon’s or Christina’s brilliant posts
>> simply end up in an empty chamber, without echo. If Ana suggest that she
>> has given up waiting for reactions.  If there is not need for echo,
>> resonance, other than self-congratulation, no need for sharper critique and
>> honesty, then I’d say, forget the era, it’s over, you (the pyre) were
>> rejected, it burnt up. (And yes, a four-year lag is fine, for me, the
>> letter I received was personal and never needed to be public.)
>>
>> respectfully, and without regret,
>> thanking many and all here with whom I corresponded
>> over the years on discussions that moved me,
>> not backwards into a lost era of flaneurs, but forward,.
>>
>> Johannes Birringer
>> dap-lab
>>
>> 
>> [Simon schreibt]
>>
>> I am confused about your introduction to my post: I am verbose? I am
>>  also to the point. I am incomprehensible? I am also direct. I am
>>  powerfully political. I am nonsensical. Poetic.
>>
>>  ... I write to you as a recent PhD. in the job market, transcendent uber
>>  alles. (Perhaps there is a market for the qualities you list? Please let
>>  me know.)
>> [...]
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
> --
> https://anavaldes.wordpress.com/
> www.twitter.com/caravia158
> http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/
> http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia
> http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0
>
>
>
>
> 
>
> cell Sweden +4670-3213370 <+46%2070%20321%2033%2070>
> cell Uruguay +598-99470758 <+598%2099%20470%20758>
>
>
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
> your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always
> long to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___

Re: [-empyre-] Empyre

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Jake, welcome to Empire list. A response to your question: Emyre has
lasted that long because disagreements and discussions are permitted and
even welcomed in it. Though you will see Empty has its own up and down
rhythm over a period of time, it never loses its underlying openness.

It is interesting you had not even heard of or known what a listserv is.
How much has changed over a relatively short period of time.

Ciao,
Murat

C

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 10:35 AM, Jake Puglisi 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello,
>
> My name is Jake Puglisi.
> I'm currently a sophomore at Cornell University enrolled in Renate Ferro's
> digital media class. Before this semester I have had no know knowledge of
> what a listserv or how it works, so I'm excited to be apart of this
> community! I'm interested in getting some opinions on why one thinks that
> empyre is a useful resource when conducting research or learning from
> others. Im wondering, won't the information sometimes be biased or
> incorrect? Why do you think empire has lasted so long, and how do you think
> that it will expand in this growing and changing time period? I would love
> to hear some opinions, thank you in advance!
>
> Yours,
> Jake
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] lists -

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Before we become nostalgic about lists, attaching a retro aura to them, we
must see clearly what placed lists in the backwaters of the internet world.
There are technical and economical forced behind this change. The
quintessential characteristic of lists is that they create threads so that
a new post to the thread repositions the whole thread to the forefront.
This way an argument, a discussion can be sustained. Comments, posts have
duration. They can be exchanged, a dialogue, etc., can be formed. Facebook
is more like a ticker tape. Posts are sent into a continuum --an ocean of
other comments by others-- and are almost impossible to retrieve after a
short period of time. That is why the stylistic ideal in Facebook is geared
to catch the attention for a moment --the most prifolous the better.
Basically endless series of chitchat. Nothing to be picked up later. This
change of course was intentional, to maximize the number, rather than the
quality, of the hits making the platform commercially most viable.

When lists were gradually replaced by blogs --a more solipsistic medium
where posts induce very few comments, regardless of how interesting they
may be --most people that I know celebrated this development considering it
an expansion. I was one of the very few who thought otherwise. I think my
point at that point is more obvious now. There is a direct line from lists
to blogs to Facebook.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 1:22 PM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Hi, just to add a couple of things here -
>
> Michael Current and I started two lists in 1994, Cybermind (philosophy of
> cyberspace) and Fiction-of-Philosophy. Michael ran the Deleuze and other
> lists at the time as part of the Spoon list/philosophy consortium. He died
> shortly after the lists began. Cybermind was with AOL for a while and now
> is at WVU; Fiction-of-Philosophy became Wryting-l, also at WVU. Jon Marshal
> is on Cybermind and wrote Living on Cybermind, a phenomenology of the list,
> which is still the best in-depth analysis of e-lists I've seen. Jerry
> Everard, also still on, wrote Virtual States, The Internet and the
> Boundaries of the Nation-State, some of which came out of Cyb. as well. The
> list also self-published a novel and in 1996, I think, held a large
> conference in Perth which was remarkable; predating, I think, Virtual
> Futures, it used Cu-SeeMe live video, a MOO, a newsgroup, and various chat
> applications to create a live/living virtual environment stemming out of
> the physical conf. The conf. was a success; Stelarc, myself and a number of
> others made it down to Perth. The lists continue with diminished
> participation; Cybermind in particular became a relatively deep community,
> but many of the participants have died or moved on. Wryting is a vehicle
> for one or another form of avant-poetics and continues. As Fiction-of-
> Philosophy, I had a great deal of trouble moderating and it fell apart as a
> result early on, and reconstituted; Cybermind had problems with trolls and
> people determined to bring the list down. Both lists flirted with
> moderating, but we it never took, which was remarkable. Both have been
> running smoothly for decades now.
>
> The obvious advantage of lists is targeted inbox buffering which allows
> for thoughtful response. I'm reading/writing in linux, and there are no
> detractions to the text. For some reason I keep thinking of older reading
> and reading habits (see https://www.theglobeandmail.co
> m/opinion/i-have-forgotten-how-toread/article37921379/ for example) and
> the obvious fact that the world is inordinately complex, not a collocation
> of Ted talks - the advantage of lists is that here and now we have the
> space/time/place/communality for thoughtful discussion. That's remarkable,
> I think. As others have mentioned, by the way, other than empyre, I read
> and participate in Netbehaviour (and in Furtherfield in general for that
> matter); I read and almost never post with nettime - both of these are
> fantastic, open, and in depth. There are also specialized lists; I'm on an
> Anglo-Saxon one, for example, where I'm completely quiet but learn a great
> deal, etc. And I resubbed to Future Culture which is relatively quiet.
>
> Because lists are considered backwater, when they do function, they do so
> beautifully, without trolling or advertising or 'hints' which accompany
> Facebook and other sm. There's something almost sutra-like about them - we
> can think on our own time/space. Btw some very early magazines had a bit of
> that quality, such as The Gentleman's Magazine and British Apollo; they
> seem, now to have been organized around communities which participated in
> coffeehouse culture of the time.
>
> Best, Alan
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> 

Re: [-empyre-] digital tools

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Ana, my experience in the digital world is very similar to yours,
particularly in Facebook. It seems you need to have a certain style to get
reactions in Facebook, in addition to spending a lot of time on it. The
questions seem to be self centered, such as, "what do you think...,"
requiring on the spur of the moment responses, short and momentary.
Facebook designed it that way so that it gets a maximum number of hits.
This is a perfect example of the medium determining the nature of our
thinking, even more essentially, determining human nature itself.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Feb 11, 2018 at 12:37 PM, Ana Valdés  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> The problem with the digital writing is the lack of a real “conversation”.
> And it was the reason I ended my active presence in Stumble Upon I didn’t
> face any challenge posting my lectures my links and my thoughts in the
> empty space.
> It was the same with Scoop.it, an interesting platform created in Italy
> where you curate news and links. I was very active at the beginning but now
> I am not using it any more. For some reasons as the above.
> I made a long break in my use of Facebook for the same reasons the lack of
> interactivity and I feel the same in Twitter now I get very seldom an
> answer to my postings and it’s rare to find some interested in a
> conversation for a longer period.
>
> That’s one of the reasons I love -empyre :) the form is still for me one
> of the most successful ways to use digital writing as a way to interact to
> have reactions and to generate new thoughts.
>
> I am a traditional writer as well, I published between 10 and 14 books,
> fiction, poetry, essays, translations, a children book. But excepting the
> reviewers who presented the books in cultural pages I got very little
> response from my readers. If you add up them I have surely ten or twelve
> thousand readers, but they are as mute as my 5000 Twitter followers. My
> Facebooks friends, almost four thousand, are better reacting but it’s very
> rare to have a long term conversation.
>
> I love Walter  Benjamin’s writings, specially his book “Passagenwerke”,
> his books about the galleries in Paris and the “flaneur”, the one engaged
> in casual strolls in discovering new paths new things to see, the one able
> to walk endlessly without reaching any special point, the one seeing behind
> the map or the print or the canvas of a city.
>
> I am a digital flaneur and want to discover the unseen.
>
> Ana
>
> sön 11 feb. 2018 kl. 13:01 skrev Renate Terese Ferro :
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Dear Ana
>> Interesting that you referenced Marc Garrett and Ruth Catlow, both of
>> whom I reached out to be guests this month, were unable to join us because
>> of previous commitments.
>> https://www.furtherfield.org/
>>
>> Furtherfield.org, an online platform, was originated collaboratively by
>> both Marc and Ruth in London in 1996.  Their mission was to nurture
>> collaboration as opposed to the historical assumption that artistic genius
>> was an independent venture.  It was in 2004 that Furtherfield touched down
>> in physical space inspiring networked media art in a North London
>> neighborhood.  They host exhibitions, events, pirate radio, activism,
>> street art but also continue to have an online presence that invests in
>> both the theory and practice of digital culture and technology.
>>
>> In looking at your online presence Ana it appears that your last post on
>> Stumble upon, if I am reading it correctly, was in 2011. Your writing
>> practice has reflected changes and shifts in technology throughout the past
>> 35 years.  On twitter, you have 5,624 followers and you follow 6,166
>> today.  I am really looking forward to hearing about the reflections of
>> your political voice within your early writing and if you were ever fearful
>> about being so open?  How do you think your voice has shifted over the
>> years?  I have a few Introduction to Digital Media students from Cornell
>> who are lurking in on our conversation.  Many of them and other new
>> subscribers are not as familiar with the history of networked platforms.
>> Hoping you will share your own perspectives and experiences and thanks for
>> this link to Marc’s insightful discussion of your online presence.
>>
>> More later today.  Renate
>>
>> Renate Ferro
>> Visiting Associate Professor
>> Director of Undergraduate Studies
>> Department of Art
>> Tjaden Hall 306
>> rfe...@cornell.edu
>>
>> On 2/11/18, 10:35 AM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
>> behalf of Ana Valdés" > behalf of agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> 

Re: [-empyre-] And one more: Welcome to Ben Kinsley

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thank you, Ben. This is a great, mysterious post. Keep on sending them.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 4:15 PM, Mez Breeze  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi All,
>
> Lurking away on the fringes, on the lip-edge of human disturbances, to
> find this post. Thank you Ben for an amazing, and affirming post.
>
> Yours in the Mycelium,
> Mez
> --
> mezbreezedesign.com
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 11:47 AM, Ben Kinsley 
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I've been following along with the past month's discussions, waiting for
>> my chance to talk about mushrooms. If anyone knows me personally, this
>> won't come as much of a surprise... I'm always finding ways to lead
>> conversations towards fungi ;) I've become quite obsessed with the mushroom
>> world over the past few years. This all began in upstate NY, in the
>> Adirondacks, where my wife and I go each summer. In the Adirondacks,
>> there's a tradition to collect an "Artist Conk" fungus (Ganoderma
>> applanatum) on hikes, and make a commemorative etching onto its surface,
>> writing the date, place, names of participants, sometimes drawings of
>> memorable sights, and put these on a shelf in your cabin. Our neighbor has
>> a whole wall full of these, and we discovered 2 in our cabin dating from
>> 1935 and 1937. So we began taking up this folk tradition, and quite quickly
>> began to encounter so many different kinds of mushrooms in the forests. In
>> our need to know more about how to accurately identify "Artist conks"
>> (look-alike species don't hold a etching permanently like Ganoderma
>> applanatum), we joined the New York Mycological Society in NYC where we
>> lived from 2013-2017. As it turns out, the New York Mycological Society was
>> co-founded by John Cage, who was an avid mushroom hunter and renowned
>> mycologist in his own right. In fact, he was perhaps as experimental in his
>> approach to mycology as he was with his music, and we know of a few more
>> choice edible species due to his (sometimes nearly deadly) experiments with
>> mycophagy (the practice of eating fungi -especially mushrooms collected in
>> the wild). Cage once explained his dual-obsessions by pointing out that
>> "music" is next to "mushroom" in most dictionaries, however after spending
>> most of my free time since 2013 foraging for mushrooms, I understand the
>> kinship between his interest in silence and mushrooms -- both require deep
>> and slow observation, and you begin to notice so many things that were once
>> hidden in plain sight. In fact, the first time we went foraging with the
>> NYMS, I couldn't find a thing. Then, after adjusting to the process of
>> looking, mushrooms were all around me! We came home from Central Park with
>> a basket full of wild edibles, and cooked a delicious brunch. From this
>> point onward I was hooked.
>>
>> I bring up mushrooms for a few reasons:
>>
>> Perhaps foremost, is the relatively new knowledge we have about the
>> mycoremediation possibilities with a variety of fungi. Oyster mushrooms,
>> for instance, have been proven to be able to clean up oil spills (as well
>> as retain their nutritional edibility!).
>>  http://www.fungi.com/blog/items/the-petroleum-problem.html
>>
>> Certain mushrooms are considered to be hyper-accumulators of heavy
>> metals. These mushrooms should not be eaten, but can be collected, thus
>> picking the heavy metals from the soil of radioactive sites.
>> https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/using-fungi-remediat
>> e-radiation-fukushima
>>
>> Certain species of mushrooms are highly medicinal. Turkey Tail, Enoki,
>> Maitake, Reishi, and Chaga have proven anti-caner and immune-enhancing
>> effects. Shitake has antiviral and cholesterol-reducing effects. Lion's
>> Mane is believed to stimulate nerve growth. Cordyceps are known to improve
>> respiratory health and increase oxygen uptake, among other properties (It
>> has been recommended to me to take cordyceps to help with elevation
>> sickness, as I adjust to the Colorado elevation). There is also active
>> research being done with Bird's Nest fungi and its possible effects to
>> fight pancreatic cancer.
>> https://www.drweil.com/diet-nutrition/nutrition/mushrooms-fo
>> r-good-health/
>>
>> There is research being done (again) with psilocybin being administered
>> to terminal-cancer patients in an effort to relieve anxiety and
>> "existential distress."
>> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment
>>
>> Newly published research on cordycepts have shown that when they infect
>> an ant, the fungus actually infiltrates and surrounds muscle fibers
>> throughout the ant’s body, and takes over all functions *except for* the
>> brain - essentially puppeteering the ant! (It was previously thought that
>> the fungus took over the 

Re: [-empyre-] North Bay Fire and Desert Art Lab

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Best wishes for them.

Murat

On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 1:51 AM, Meredith Drum 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello Everyone,
>
> Unfortunately April and Matt of Desert Art Lab might not be able to join
> us this week as they have had to evacuate their home due to the North Bay
> fire. I am sending them, and everyone in that area, my best wishes. Please
> be careful.
>
> I was looking forward to hearing from April and Matt about their focus on
> desert ecosystems, food justice and self-resilience. I would like to hear
> about their experiences working with communities using social practice
> methodologies to shift participants perception of deserts as empty and
> lifeless to deserts as full of opportunity. I think that my own work,
> particularly Fish Stories Community Cookbook, shares some methods and aims
> with Desert Art Lab.
>
> Perhaps April and Matt can enter the discussion later this month.
>
> Best,
> Meredith
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 154, Issue 4

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Brian, where are you writing from?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 3:28 PM, Elaine Gan  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Thanks so much, Margaretha, for bringing us together around these great
> (and hard) themes. Everyone's posts this week has me thinking about many
> things—thank you!—but particularly the work of art in what Isabelle
> Stengers calls "catastrophic times." I don't want to grieve. No, not yet. I
> want to learn how to live again and again: we are still here and that
> recognition demands that we make kin, kin through which and with which "we"
> are being remade. Maybe that's what Margaretha calls "personhood"?— the
> ability to make kin and keep each other alive when a hurricane, earthquake,
> or plague of human exceptionalism obliterates "us."
>
> I'm interested in radicalities, work(s) of art, that aren't defined
> entirely by refusal against or critique of the Capitalocene, but by
> capacities to make kin. I learn this from Donna Haraway: making kin comes
> before, after, and in between the cracks and crap of capitalism and
> bourgeois liberalism. I'm looking for propositions for more-than-human
> worlding, for Haraway's Chthulucene, the "not yet finished, ongoing,
> abyssal and dreadful ones that are generative *and *destructive..." I
> don't want to grieve the road kill. I don't want to care for invasive
> species and toxic waste. I follow weeds, but I also fear them. I want to
> learn how we can bend our roads, design our cities and stomachs—so that
> they do not collide with migration routes of monarch butterflies, breeding
> grounds of giant catfish, life cycles of too many companions. If capitalism
> is a way of organizing things, as Jason Moore theorizes, then what is a way
> of making, making-with, kin? How might we map this double internality?
>
> I met a non-native yesterday, hanging out in Echo Park lake (one of the
> oldest and likely most haunted) in LA. I met several non-natives, in fact,
> but one that made me stop was a red-eared slider turtle who swam up to me,
> likely trained to equate people with easy food. These turtles are common,
> listed on many websites as "cute" little things that make "great household
> pets." Hundreds live in the lake; most likely, abandoned by owners who
> decided they just weren't so cute anymore. From what I could find online
> last night, this group of turtles has only been around since the lake's
> overhaul in 2012. Of course, my first question was: hey, what happened to
> the turtles that lived in the lake when it was drained completely for a
> two-year renovation? The next few questions were harder: are these turtles
> kin? Are they nature or culture in the Capitalocene or the Chthulucene?
> What is my/our responsibility to species that we've domesticated,
> displaced, mutated, and rendered disposable, when they've gone feral and
> survive outside of human control? Some become road kill. Some become new
> companions. But others are taking over, creating new indeterminacies
> (generative *and* destructive naturecultures). What then is the work of
> art in attending to these that are changing what it means to be human (and
> nonhuman)?
>
> xElaine
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 9:49 AM, Brian Karl  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> I've been dipping in and out of Charles Foster's "Being a Beast" of
>> late (sub-title: "Adventures Across the Species Divide"), in which he
>> rather literally tries to embody a phenomenological experience closer
>> to that of a badger, an otter, a fox, a deer and a swift by burrowing
>> in and snuffling about closer to the earth for days and weeks at a
>> time in the wild. He fully admits the absurdity as well as doomed
>> enterprise of this, but meanwhile gets in a lot of philosophizing
>> about human species' different relation to nature as well as lots of
>> good sensorial thinking about different ways of relating to the
>> complex and interactive physical world--what is framed and highlighted
>> (or high-smelled or -heard) by different species' sensory organs and
>> foraging needs...
>>
>> Responding to Margaretha's last inquiry:
>>
>> Well, my non-humans of late are pretty diverse: long, ongoing
>> relationship continues with Bando, my mostly outdoors Siamese cat, who
>> still sleeps with us humans most mornings after long nights
>> tree-climbing and...who knows what adventuring.
>>
>> We have been together for going on six years, but it's changed and
>> deepened in new ways since moving to the edge of a big open space
>> trail last year where both he and I encounter different species every
>> day--perhaps most spectacularly of late when he led me down the
>> beginning of the trail one night a few weeks ago to discover the sound
>> of rustling in some bushes to be caused by a pretty good-sized
>> rattlesnake -- we got 

Re: [-empyre-] Machine Dreams

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Ben,

I have two questions in relation to your post:

"... and thought of dreams as a possible
non-rational, non-problem-solving, non-task-oriented form of novelty
generation..."

Is a dream a novelty creation? On what basis are you making this
equivalence?

"... built a system meant as a
site-specific generative artwork that 'senses' the world through a live
camera and creates
*its own internal simulation of reality that is manifest in perceptual,
dreaming and mind-wandering modes*. ..."

It's true that dreaming, more specifically daydreaming, has an appearance
of wandering. But, once again, you are equating the two. How do you know
that in dreaming (particularly in the kind that occurs during sleep) an
inner logic, not easily available to the conscious mind, does not order
that "wandering"? (Our understanding of dreaming that occurred in the 20th
century suggests that.) Does your algorithms take that into account  or do
you replace it with the "inner logic" of the machine. So we have
"mechanical sheep" dreaming"?

Ciao,
Murat



On Thu, May 25, 2017 at 5:20 PM, B. Bogart  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello All,
>
> My apologies for jumping on this older message, but I could not resist
> responding to the subject.
>
> Mark, thank you for posting info on this event. I will check out the
> video stream.
>
> Since 2008 I've been developing a series of site-specific installations
> that use machine learning and computer vision to construct their own
> dreams (and perceptions). I came to the work after masters study in the
> context of machine creativity and thought of dreams as a possible
> non-rational, non-problem-solving, non-task-oriented form of novelty
> generation.
>
> I ended up doing a PhD on the topic and built a system meant as a
> site-specific generative artwork that 'senses' the world through a live
> camera and creates its own internal simulation of reality that is
> manifest in perceptual, dreaming and mind-wandering modes.  The approach
> and model of dreaming is currently being used to appropriate popular
> cinematic depictions of AI.
>
> For more info:
>
> http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2009/dm2/
>
> http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2012/an-artist-in-processa-
> computational-sketch-of-dreaming-machine-3/
>
> http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2014/watching-and-dreaming-
> 2001-a-space-odyssey-2014/
>
> http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2017/watching-blade-runner-2016/
>
> https://youtu.be/Clp0blcHG8M
>
> https://youtu.be/xYtt8qSwJws
>
> Ben Bogart, PhD
> www.ekran.org
>
>
>
> On 2017-05-22 08:45 AM, Mark Marino wrote:
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi, Machine Dreamers,
> >
> > I'm so excited for this week's discussion.  Our Machine Dreams encounter
> > was one I will not forget.  For those of you who missed it, you can
> > watch a somewhat pixelated version here.
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFYFaWrqZik
> >
> > As I read over our publication from Machine Dreams, flip through the
> > pages of Radio heart, or think about our time together, I'm struck by
> > the shear humanity of the whirls with robots.  Or rather, I'm struck by
> > the parts of humanity that emerge from the whirls.
> >
> > Why are we so drawn to the machines of our machine dreams, as people, as
> > artists, as dreamers? I'm starting to think that it is not their
> > inability to be completely human but instead their ability to fully
> > embody one part of the human attributes without manifesting the full
> > meat sack of messy, squishy embodied being. In other words, they allow
> > us to imagine intensely our humanity in part.   Not metonymic but in
> > isolation.
> >
> > An emotion.  A logical flow.  A sense of consideration without empathy.
> > Knowledge without understanding.
> >
> > But our intense encounter with even that part of humanity -- that part
> > of humanity isolated from the whole -- is transformative.
> >
> > "I still hear you radio heart beating
> > Inside the meat of mine."
> >
> > And of course, no doubt this partiality is part and parcel of our
> > experience of one another.
> >
> > That is my first thought.  Looking forward to our conversation.
> >
> > Best,
> > Mark Marino
> >
> >
> > ___
> > empyre forum
> > empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> >
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Why Westworld?

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Lawrence and others, it seems a much simpler and basic precedent and
analogy seems to be overlooked here: Roman gladiator spectacles,
delectation and frisson for the privileged and circus for the masses to
appease them. By raising their thumbs or not they have the illusion that
they have control over something.

Instead of meeting people's needs, creating spectacles where someone else
is suffering more than they do-- momentarily being at a safe place (in the
galleries of the Coliseum or in front of TV) while someone else is buffeted
with mortal peril.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 8:40 AM, Lawrence-Minh Davis <
lawrence.minh.da...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Why *Westworld*? Because I work at the Smithsonian, and *Westworld* feels
> all about museums to me.
>
>
>
> We get a theme park in Westworld that epitomizes the interactive, “user
> experience”-centric model of encountering history so prevalent in museums
> today. Helpfully we get to see the park from the participant and the design
> end of things (the management end, too). Added bonus that *Westworld* twins
> the wonder of museums and the violence that always inheres in that
> wonder—the violence the traditional museum endeavors to hide, or at least
> normalize. I mean representational violence, I mean epistemic violence,
> and, of course, I mean real-time physical violence. Museums need them all.
>
>
>
> Westworld the park makes no effort to pretend to be a faithful recounting
> of history. Nor is it even showing us how history is made, wink wink.
> Westworld’s Old West is a ritual, a flashy means of codifying relations,
> reenacting or recreating an imagined past that is, of course, present and
> future as well. Meaning it is playing out collective desires, most
> immediately for white male power, that are not at all past, never past, but
> present, and in tension, therefore in need of continual rehearsal so that
> they might carry into the future. This is pretty much how our museums work
> too.
>
>
>
> Complicating matters in *Westworld* are the hosts, historical props who
> are not static but living, and feeling, and inconveniently fucking up the
> ritual, not all happy to keep playing out the collective desires of park
> visitors and designers.
>
>
>
> Museums of today don’t have hosts…well, see the recent scandal at the 2017
> American Alliance of Museums Expo, when the museum vendor LifeFormations
> exhibited a true-to-scale diorama of a white man selling an enslaved black
> man on an auction block. The mannequins didn’t revolt, but, surprise
> surprise, expo-goers of color did (side note: the theme of this year’s expo
> was “Diversity, Equity, Accessibility: Inclusion in Museums”!)
>
>
>
> The message across spaces is pretty clear: you can’t stage human bodies as
> props, or rather you can, but get ready for violent blowback.
>
>
>
> In the museum world as in *Westworld* we're asking who gets the power to
> tell stories, and the answer is never simple, even as more people from
> marginalized communities make their way up museum hierarchies.
>
>
> Watching the show I feel this deep sympathy for Bernard, who as park
> engineer is a kind of curator, trying with conviction and bewilderment at
> once to balance his various imperatives and impulses, trying to be ethical
> and good at his job while figuring out on the fly his limitations, his
> shifting allegiances, his own shifting identity, his relative privilege and
> power, his complicity—feelings I certainly experience, and I would guess
> pretty much all curators of color experience to some degree or another.
> Like Bernard, we get the shock of getting put in our place sometimes. But
> we're also in a time of revolt, and our own season 2 is coming.
>
> --
> Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, PhD
> Curator, Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
> Editor, The Asian American Literary Review
> Adjunct Faculty, University of Maryland Asian American Studies Program
> (443) 878-3796
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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Re: [-empyre-] What is robot poetics? How/why should we teach it?

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Margaret, the upcoming publication of Peter Valente's science fiction
novella *Partheogenesis* may shed additional light on the subject of the
bending of sexual identities. This novella will be published together with
another novella of his *Plague In the Imperial City*.

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 2:56 PM, Margaret J Rhee  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Dear Sean, Susan, and all,
>
> Im so moved at how you've centered play within queer science fictions, and
> this incredible class!! that includes Butler, Ahmed, to Le Guin, alongside
> cultural texts! I feel the possibilities of gender, and queer expressions
> of intimacy really speak to one another especially within the science
> fictional worlds of robots, and your pedagogy really framed in an exciting
> cross genre way. I love how you provided strong theoretical grounding for
> the students, to then begin to understand gender/sexual expressions within
> SF robot worlds. The framing with _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ and
> Futurama is exciting, and how you taught them about bodies, marking,
> through the intimacies between robots, humans, Amphibiosan, etc.! It makes
> me think to learn about SF, really also requires learning about
> queer/gender theory...
>
> It reminds me also of your own exquisite fairy tales, which also queers
> the genre in such interesting ways, and I'm looking forward to your
> forthcoming collection, "Thank You for Listening" from Mindmade Books. I
> want to learn more, and like Susan, excited about your pedagogical
> pairings, and discussion of queer SF and fairytales. Thank you again for
> your pedagogy, and SF queer worlding.
>
> warmly,
>
> Margaret
>
>
> On 2017-05-04 17:07, Pessin, Sean E wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hello everyone!
>>
>> Thank you all so much for the recommendations and ideas that have been
>> shared here. While I have been trying to figure out how to participate
>> in this discussion, I have been delighted in these various approaches
>> to considering the robopoetic. There is much here already to consider
>> and this thread will sustain me for some time.
>>
>> I taught _Radio Heart_ in a special topics class on Queer Theory and
>> Science Fictions that is supposed to be a kind of culminating class.
>> Students in this class are supposed to be given materials and then
>> they are supposed to develop and finish projects on their own. To
>> facilitate this, the class emphasized the kinds of play that queer
>> theorists and science fiction writers perform. To that end, my
>> inclusion of _Radio Heart_ exposed students to queer experimental
>> science fiction poetry, as I am also inclined to read the book as
>> exploring its central relationship in a queer way.
>>
>> The method of the class was to provide incremental exposure to a lot
>> of material that is supposed to disorient the students so that they
>> may reorient, or to give them opportunities to turn from one way of
>> thinking and to another, to borrow Sara Ahmed’s framework in _Queer
>> Phenomenology_. We started with Lucian’s _True History_, and then
>> worked through classics like Judith Butler’s _Gender Trouble_ and
>> Ursula LeGuin’s _The Left Hand of Darkness_, setting the stage, so to
>> speak, for all manner of gender play and science fiction imaginings
>> that students could then use to explore in their own
>> critical/creative/hybrid projects through sustained play.
>>
>> Once my students opened up to considering the possibilities of gender
>> expression, and how those possibilities were present in science
>> fiction texts, as a class we then asked how bodies may perform or
>> manifest those expressions in textual forms. We covered as part of one
>> of our conversations _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_, an episode of
>> the television show _Futurama_, “Proposition Infinity,” and, of
>> course, _Radio Heart_ in our session closest to Valentine’s Day. It
>> was no coincidence—using the holiday as a backdrop, we took on as our
>> conversation’s starting point, what to make of constructed lovers?
>> Their desires? The expression of these desires? and of their lovers
>> and creators: Who made them and for whom?
>>
>> We looked at _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_, when Dr. Frank N. Furter
>> defends the aesthetics he demonstrates in his creation, Rocky, to
>> Janet: “I didn’t make him for you!”; when the robot Bender Rodriguez
>> defends his robosexual relationship with Amy Wong _Futurama_: “After
>> all, our love isn't any different than yours, except it's hotter,
>> 'cause I'm involved;” and at the moments when in _Radio Heart_’s
>> “Beam, Robot” the speaker considers the robot lover’s constructedness:
>> “you’re all made so uniquely…” “who programmed you?”
>>
>> Further questions raised by this paring came from the students: What
>> kinds of play inform the perspectives of 

Re: [-empyre-] A poem is a small (or large) machine

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"The imagery of mechanical efficiency and "perfect economy" is intriguing.
How might Charles Bernstein's metaphor of a poetic "engine idling" contrast
with that? (I'm thinking of Ming-Qian Ma's discussion of that idling image
and Bernstein's poetics as "postmodern counter speed.") What would the
machinery of a poetics of inefficiency look like?"

Hi Susan, Chris,

When Bernstein is saying that a poem should be like an engine idling, he is
saying that a poem is a machine that does not act like a machine. Isn't the
next step to say a poem is not a machine.

At the heart of a poetics of inefficiency lies a substantiation of
time,making time visible by slowing it. Time becomes duration. Duration is
against flow, i.e., inefficiency. My last poem *Animals of Dawn* deals
exactly with this issue by exploring the nature of the delays in *Hamlet*
in carrying out the avenging of his father's murder. Hamlet lives in a
different time dimension than the other characters.

Going back to the issue of modern architecture and Rem Koolhaas's *Delirious
New York* on the development of the New York grid and the building of
skyscrapers. One of the key points in the book is that one essential
concern of city planners and architects in New York City was maintain an
efficient traffic flow. The shape of the buildings had to accommodate
itself (like a cog in a machine) to the necessity of this flow. Poetry
should be against flow (clogging the traffic, so to speak) or, as Jack
Spicer's poetics of the serial poem says, writing should be "against the
grain."

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 2:04 PM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> naturally, or perhaps i should say cyborganically, following these threads
> with interest & appreciate the expansiveness. imo, the Williams quote/poem
> is good, of course, but somewhat overused. the poem i chose as epigraph to 
> *Prehistoric
> Digital Poetry* (written by Canadian Lionel Kearns), in favor over
> anything else, refers to WCW & takes it further, relevant to this
> discussion. pasted here, probably dis-formatted
>
>
> “The poem is a machine,” said that famous man, and so I’m building one.
> Or at least I’m having it built, because I want something big and
> impressive and
> automatic.
> You see, people will stand in front of it and insert money, dimes or
> quarters,
> depending upon the poem’s locus.
> Yes the whole thing will clank and hum and light up and issue a string of
> words
> on colored ticker-tape.
> Or maybe the customers will wear ear-phones and turn small knobs so the
> experience will be more audile-tactile than old fashioned visual.
> In any case they will only get one line at a time,
> This being the most important feature of my design which is based on the
> principle that,
> In poetry, “one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further
> perception,”
> And therefore the audience will be compelled to feed in coin after coin.
> Now I admit that the prototype model that you see on display is something
> of a
> compromise, as it has a live poet concealed inside.
> But I assure you that this crudity will eventually be eliminated
> Because each machine, I mean each poem, is to be fully computerized
> And so able to stand on its own feet.
> —Lionel Kearns, “Kinetic Poem” (1968)
>
> On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Margaret J Rhee  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> "There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small
>> (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing
>> sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is
>> redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship.
>> But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.
>> As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical
>> more than a literary character."
>>
>> I'd like to start a thread about this quote by WCW, that Mike raised here.
>> A friend the Mexican poet Hugo Martinez, remarked we should replace
>> machine
>> with machete.
>>
>> "There must be something hardwired into its machinery--a heartbeat, a
>> pulse--that keeps it breathing." -- Ed Hirsch
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Christopher T. Funkhouser
> Program Director, Communication and Media
> Department of Humanities
> New Jersey Institute of Technology
> University Heights
> Newark, NJ 07102
> http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous
> funkh...@njit.edu
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au

Re: [-empyre-] A poem is a small (or large) machine

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--""There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small
(or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing
sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is
redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship.
But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy."

Margaret, if we change the word "redundant" to "non-functional," one might
as well be describing modern architecture of Bauhaus, etc. I wonder if our
era has not gone beyond that stage and requires a different aesthetic, one
more in tune with the realities of our times.

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Margaret J Rhee  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> "There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small
> (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing
> sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is
> redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship.
> But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.
> As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical
> more than a literary character."
>
> I'd like to start a thread about this quote by WCW, that Mike raised here.
> A friend the Mexican poet Hugo Martinez, remarked we should replace machine
> with machete.
>
> "There must be something hardwired into its machinery--a heartbeat, a
> pulse--that keeps it breathing." -- Ed Hirsch
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] teaching robot poetry

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Susan, the entirety of *The Spiritual Life of Replicants* (Talisman
House, 2011) is only in book form. It can be bought through Amazon or
Independent Book Publishers. Selections from it are on line, for instance
in *The Brooklyn Rail* (
http://brooklynrail.org/2009/10/poetry/from-the-spiritual-life-of-replicants)
or in Jerome Rothenbereg's *Poems and Poetics *that can be accessed through
*Jacket2*. Along with passages from the poem, Jerome included my after-word
essay "A Few Thoughts On Fragments." Also, PennSound at the University of
Pennsylvania has a video recording of me reading about half of the poem
starting from the beginning, including the Q section at Kelly House (
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Nemet-Nejat.php). It may be very worth
while buying the book itself.

Ciao,
Murat

On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 1:31 PM, Davin Heckman <davinheck...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Following on Alan's comments comments on canonicity, and the value of what
> exists beyond...  I suspect that the great patterning of our century is the
> orchestration of affect (things like Facebook's husbandry of wild affective
> states, their domestication, and conversion into commodities).  And here
> our passions become Roundup Ready Terminator seeds, dead end creatures in
> tidy little rows, waiting for a machine to spray the weeds.
>
> What can exist outside of this? Against this? In spite of this? Beyond
> this? What little wildflowers may bloom? I think the understood works are a
> place where we can see and know that in our days of emergency, not all
> emergence is equivalent, and that there are instances where we can leave
> and detect traces, however strong or subtle they may be. But there are
> territories beyond this (I was recently reading Zepka's apotrolomena), and
> the signals they send are yet more alien  And that gives me hope.
>
> In reviewing the about page from the ELC 3 (http://collection.
> eliterature.org/3/about.html), I am reminded that there are some
> interesting lines of flight implied  a collection that dwells a bit
> more on its ephemerality than the two previous, but like the others
> contains many very real wildflowers...
>
> Davin
>
> On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 11:47 AM, VANDERBORG, SUSAN VANDERBORG <
> sjvan...@mailbox.sc.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Davin, thanks--these are terrific resources for the Montfort/Strickland
>> pieces! Murat, might it be possible to post a link to your poem or
>> information for the full volume?
>>
>> These posts and Alan's detailed piece underscore great questions of
>> publication and scholarly space for discussions of robot poetry--the need
>> to remind students that the most current and thoughtful discussions are
>> taking place in newsgroups, lists, chats, open publication sites.
>>
>> It's a wonderful boon that some of the poetry itself is available in
>> collections like the Electronic Literature Collection or on the artists'
>> site--I am so grateful to be able to direct cyborg lit students to Emily
>> Short's Galatea, for instance, or Andrew Plotkin's Shade, and Alan, I
>> believe you have posted large segments of the Internet Text online. Your
>> point, too, that many of the programming languages or environments are
>> shared reinforces the concept of publication in Borges-style, open-source
>> directions. And when some of the texts are collected in print volumes, we
>> can again discuss the effect of different visual/material formats on the
>> interpretation of the poem.
>>
>> How have other participants and readers approached questions of
>> e-publication and forums? What opportunities or difficulties does it pose
>> for authors? How do we both encourage online postings and support the
>> amazing work of presses like Finishing Line, Barrytown, Coffee House Press,
>> Coach House Books, and many others?
>> 
>> From: empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au [
>> empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Murat
>> Nemet-Nejat [mura...@gmail.com]
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2017 8:50 AM
>> To: soft_skinned_space
>> Cc: mh...@uoregon.edu
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] What is robot poetics? How/why should we teach it?
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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Re: [-empyre-] Thank you Murat

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thank you, Renate.

Murat

On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Renate Terese Ferro <rfe...@cornell.edu>
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Thanks Murat for agreeing to organize and moderate this past month @empyre
> soft-skinned space.  It was wonderful to hear new voices as well as a few
> of our familiar subscribers over the past month.  Just a reminder to all
> that the entire transcript for this past months discussion can be accessed
> at our permanent archive site http://lists.artdesign.unsw.
> edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2016-November/date.html
>
> Best Wishes to all of you and thank you again from Tim and myself.
> Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
>
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Associate Professor
> Director of Undergraduate Studies
> Department of Art
> Tjaden Hall 306
> rfe...@cornell.edu
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 12/2/16, 5:26 PM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on
> behalf of Murat Nemet-Nejat" <empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> on behalf of mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >--empyre- soft-skinned space--
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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Re: [-empyre-] reply to Sally Silvers

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--I will when I am back from Asia where I am now on January 10, 2017.

Murat

On Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Bruce Andrews <andr...@fordham.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Signing off as well, thanks to Murat & Sally & Christopher & responders
> Posted a final piece of poetry yesterday; drop me a line to stay in touch.
> Bruce
>
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 11:30 PM, Sally Silvers <silversda...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Ok, signing off on our week of empyre at 11:30 pm.
>> Thanks Murat for inviting  me and thanks to all for the exchanges.
>>
>> Sally
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 12:39 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> Hi Sally,
>>>
>>> "... Maybe that's where the money is but they are most interested in
>>> creating 'empathy' experiences so that users will actually feel for
>>> instance, the plight of say Syrian refugees as if 'in the flesh'.  It made
>>> me wonder if this would eventually inure people even more to human or
>>> planet disasters."
>>>
>>> Yes, it seems to be exactly where the danger is: confusing the images
>>> (or languages) in the web with the reality behind them.
>>>
>>> "Mining the web" that Flarf practiced also was pregnant with the same
>>> danger.
>>>
>>>
>>> "... The Red Shoes, which has some of the best dance sequences on film
>>> (even though I'm not a fan of ballet particularly)"
>>>
>>> That's why I asked you what you thought of The Red Shoes. That film
>>> seems to be the exception. A vision of what film may do.
>>>
>>> Ciao,
>>> Murat
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 29, 2016 at 5:26 PM, Sally Silvers <silversda...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>> Also, Chris, I looked at the video attachments of you playing guitar &
>>>> reading with the animated letters/words and the other one with live music
>>>> and films of underlined words and a second screen of more abstract
>>>> visuals.  I am very curious about both and wondered how my attention would
>>>> go if I saw it live.  (It was hard to hear your words in the 1st one).
>>>>
>>>> Bruce Andrews did a collaboration with the  graphic design artist, Dirk
>>>> Rowntree in which Dirk so abstracted the typeface that the words were no
>>>> longer legible.  I also think of  type designer & surfer, David Carson 
>>>> (*The
>>>> End of Type*) here too or visual artist, Bruce Pierson whose
>>>> abstractions are also built from words.  For me when the words become pure
>>>> abstract visuals it is somehow more satisfying than when I can read the
>>>> words and have to care about the meaning.  Maybe that is the difference
>>>> between visual art (in which I generally prefer abstraction) and words (in
>>>> which I find I want to discover something more social).  Not sure.
>>>>
>>>> I am used to seeing films with laptop music as a relatively new genre.
>>>> It always seemed like the film was compensating somewhat for the lack of
>>>> the expected visual of seeing a musician with a more traditional
>>>> instrument.  Because otherwise why go to live laptop music when the sound
>>>> is the same as playing it on your own computer?  Audience will go to hear
>>>> live acoustic or plugged in usual instruments; there's a long tradition for
>>>> that. But when it's live musicians  'playing' their laptops, they want
>>>> something visual to go along with it and thus a genre was born.
>>>>
>>>> Whereas it seems that Chris is adding layers and complicating the basic
>>>> situation of live music.  I wonder, Chris, if feedback has been that's it's
>>>> 'too much' to hear words and watch them at the same time?
>>>>
>>>>  I just saw a dance performance with animated  word/letter visuals by
>>>> Kay Rosen on the backdrop and on the floor.  Letters turned into words and
>>>> words went sideways and up and down, all done very subtly, wittily, and
>>>> with slow changes.  (The dance lacked the humor that the words provided)  I
>>>> didn't m

Re: [-empyre-] reply to Murat

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Alan,

Do you think the point Chuck made about speed in digital poetry (and I
concurred with) is not valid?

Murat

On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 3:01 PM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
> Ian Hatcher - amazing speed at times -
>
> Rap lyrics of course aren't read; they're speaking bodies, sometimes
> improvising, like jazz. And digital poetry can be at any speed; some of my
> readings have been extremely slow. There's no definitive style to any of
> this. At ELO confs there's a whole range of approaches, the same as with
> any writing -
>
> Good point.
>
> Yes I have heard Raworth read multiple times. Its going against the grain
> that makes his reading so distinctive. I did not say speed can not be
> present in poetry, but if so it makes a different statement. Rap lyrics
> also are read very fast, but it adds to their street sense. Speed, on the
> other hand, seems to be the modus operandi of digital poetry.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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Re: [-empyre-] reply to Murat

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Chris, I apologize for my delayed response. I wanted to mull over your
observations before I responded. You touchon issues that are important to
me:

" Poetry in oral and written forms has developed a history, we must
presume, because it appeals to deeply ingrained human sensibilities with
its often metrical presentation of language that pleases the reader’s
emotion, intellect, and imagination. A large audience might consume a
technologically complex digital poem produced as a video game, but that
text is going to be vastly different from something in the anthologies
heretofore published by W. W. Norton. Given a new set of stimuli—a slower
pace of presentation, materials absorbed as words and artwork—the typical
video-game audience might change its tastes, but I do not see those
radically different modes ever conjoining in titles that reach a high level
of popularity in mass culture"

I think here you are making two very important points. First, perhaps
non-digital poetry and digital poetry are two completely different genres.
To apply the same word "poetry" to both is a misnomer and mis-charaterises
both of them. It leads to confusion and misunderstanding of either. I tend
to agree with that evaluation.

Second, the importance of speed in understanding the digital medium. Speed
is at the heart of everything that happens there. It is a component of its
value. On the other hand, speed is antithetical to poetry, particularly
reading it. That is I think the chasm that ultimately separates them.

" don’t know if you ever saw my follow-up book, *New Directions in Digital
Poetry*? (If not, I can send a pdf)). I present a couple of case studies
about games. The first paragraph of the book speaks fairly directly to your
concern, I think: ... Upon study they begin to understand

how digital poetry functions as something other than poetry

presented on a computer, involving processes beyond those used

by print-based writers, and that poetry made with computers has

unusual qualities – representing something inventive and worthy

of engagement."


Yes, I would appreciate it very much if you can send me a pdf copy of
*New* *Directions
in Digital Poetry*.

I think the last part of the quote is reaching a similar conclusion that
finally digital poetry is not like poetry of before but a completely new
genre in a new medium. The same process occurred at the invention of
photography when it was first consider a kind of "painting" usuping some of
the representational functions of the latter; but a completely new genre in
a new medium. That is what The Peripheral Space of Photography is all about.


",,,Digital works disappear for various reasons all the time. Some of my
all-time favorite works and tools are no longer accessible—so, yes, this is
a type of failure!..."

Yes, this is the kind of failure I am talking about --digital works'
Aechilles' heel, so to speak; as opposed to a technical or artistic failure
that can be corrected by tweaking or through practice.

"... The idea of perfection is in the eye of the beholder! "

You mean perfection is what we used to call beauty?☺

"Essentially, yes. For instance, with some of the MIDI work, I have a
database full of words or phrases, and when a note on the guitar is struck,
one of the many words or phrases is selected. No particular order is
imposed, & things like this can be programmed not to repeat. Thus the
experience will be different every time. There are a lot of pieces of e-lit
like this. Even if the overall structure of the work is fixed/functioning,
what happens within it isn’t."

I watched Eli [?] which I liked a lot and which I rthink is created through
the program MIDI. I would not call the effect of the way in which letters
and morsels of texts (sometimes "randomly" underlined) appearing on the
screen random; but rather I'd call them witty and surprising. I would not
call them random because the letters' and texts' appearances and movements
on the screen has a musical, syncopating effect which is the reverse of
random.

"

With regard to Cecil, there are usually ornate structures or outlines that
he & his groups work with. These are not written out like Mozart, but
certainly exist (as diagrams on paper, as you may have seen at the Whitney
exhibit?). If I’m working with a writing program (an algorithm that makes
poetry), or whatever, I can improvise in that I can enter spontaneous,
unpremeditated input, & the machine will do what it has been told to do
with it (maybe containing random elements, maybe not).
I’m sure I didn’t cover everything, but that’s what I have for now, OK, cf"

I can see the ambiguity in the argument. What you say is true about Cecil,
but also, I am told, each performance is different even with the same
outlines. You are doing something similar yourself by introducing
unpremeditated output. On the other hand is the "ornate structures" Cecil
starts with the same, as 

Re: [-empyre-] reply to Sally Silvers

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

ke a translation of the body into something to sell
>>>> music or glamorize some other product. Of course there are some exceptions
>>>> to this as when the form of video and the form of dance/movement make a new
>>>> concept -- when the language of each is not diminished. But most of the
>>>> dance on film or via computer that I've seen seems like documentation or
>>>> romanticized body angles.
>>>>
>>>> Video on-line is never as satisfying as the body live.  (well maybe
>>>> toddlers & animals get a pass).  There is not yet a way to transform the
>>>> most common form of movement notation (Labanotation) into video
>>>> action.There is clumsy software that Merce Cunningham mastered which mostly
>>>> works with given movement combinations and vocabulary and allows you to
>>>> recombine or select parts of the body, but it's not that easy to use to
>>>> make something interesting for the computer itself; it's mostly a tool for
>>>> rehearsal.
>>>>
>>>> When gravity is absent, movement is hard to design.
>>>>
>>>> I am still trying to imagine what a combination of movement and digital
>>>> art could be without it seeming gimmicky.
>>>>
>>>> I've seen performances with robots (cute), sound triggered
>>>> electronically by dancers' bodies (so what), abstractions made by putting
>>>> light/sensor points on the body (like trees wrapped in xmas lights —very
>>>> pretty), but so far I have not seen or heard of anything that would allow
>>>> actual interaction or that makes chance or algorithms  very available or
>>>> interesting.  I'm waiting for virtual reality to at least make it more real
>>>> and felt for the viewer because 3-d has been somewhat of a bust.  I have
>>>> hopes for all these things but as of yet, nothing is as appealing to me as
>>>> actually working on the live body.  The computer is a luddite when it comes
>>>> to dance/choreography.
>>>>
>>>> When I google digital dance or computer dance, few programs come up —
>>>> mostly for managing the business side of a dance school!
>>>>
>>>> Of course, there are all these incredible, magical animated movies, but
>>>> I still remain interested in the felt body, the body with weight, that
>>>> registers gravity  I'm waiting though; I'm eager for more knowledge on the
>>>> possibilities of digital dance, in the way so many possibilities have been
>>>> organized for digital poetry/language and digital music/sound.
>>>>
>>>> Sally Silvers
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 4:23 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>>> Chris, first, happy Thanksgiving to you and to all the others, at
>>>>> least the people living in the United States. Also thank you for your
>>>>> thoughtful answers.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yes, for a short moment at least, the idea of making Empyre like a
>>>>> 1990's listserv was intentional, ideas coming from different directions,
>>>>> the excitement of not knowing where to turn next, etc. Those lists were
>>>>> meandering, argumentative, even sometimes hostile; but very productive. My
>>>>> purpose has been to project a sense of what we miss, what the web has
>>>>> become.
>>>>>
>>>>> "... I was wondering what you meant by my work being, “in fascinating
>>>>> ways full of contradictions”. Early on as a poet who became somewhat of a
>>>>> technologist, I might have seen that as a contradiction (others definitely
>>>>> did), though not anymore..."
>>>>>
>>>>> The contradiction (in a positive sense) I am referring to is not in
>>>>> your involvement in technology as a poet. After all, all of us as artists
>>>>> or poets use technology. in some way or another, be it a pencil or a
>>>>> computer. Rather, I am referring to, as I see it, an interesting
>>>>> contradiction (or tension) in your ideals/impulses. On the one hand,
>>>>> reading your *Prehistoric Digital Poetry*. I sensed a great interest
>>>>> in developing the capabilities of the computer progressively to create a
>>>>> poetry *unique to the medium* from word to image to mo

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

days, what identity group commitments are being reflected.
>>>> And a lot of that put some distance in my relationship to its central
>>>> pushes.
>>>>
>>>> One thing relevant, I think, to talking about 'the digital' [which is
>>>> our topic & I'm as guilty as anyone of straying...] is how poets decide
>>>> what to present in a live, 'poetry-reading' situation. This has certainly
>>>> led a bunch of folks to put on sophisticated, elaborate multi-media
>>>> performances, often with off-putting tech troubles — to incorporate digital
>>>> formats, audio-visuals, sometimes the kitchen sink, into their (usually)
>>>> half-hour presentations. [In recent years, I've heard many — especially
>>>> younger — poets talk about how boring a straight, unadorned reading is,
>>>> compared with the additions of singing, video, photo slides, live musicians
>>>> or soundtracks:  very possibly as we shift into the 21st century digital
>>>> 'screen' world].  For me, moving to NYC forty years ago [coming from grad
>>>> school in Massachusetts, where there were basically no readings up my alley
>>>> — oh, I remember one fabulous exception:  Bob Grenier reading with Larry
>>>> Eigner — & my having given only one or two public readings of my own work],
>>>> meant figuring out *what* work that I'd written would work best in
>>>> that situation (having for the previous half dozen years only evaluated &
>>>> quibbled over & sorted my work based on reading it on the page):  so,
>>>> checking out audience reactions to various kinds of writing & seeing what
>>>> tended to get enthusiastically responded to [parallel? musicians, moving
>>>> from bedroom to the stage, from recording to live occasion]. This is still
>>>> a keen interest of mine when it comes to making music/sound for dance
>>>> performances — seeing, in other people's dance/music collaborations, what
>>>> seems to work or not. Anyhow, not only did I start to figure out what
>>>> poetry of mine might function well in a live environment, it started (&
>>>> continues) to affect the sort of writing I'm likely to do — I'm much more
>>>> prone to foreground the *sound* of the language & the sonic tone of
>>>> the rhetoric & address than I was in the early 1970s; also, I got much more
>>>> interested in not only discursive/social materials to 'deploy' in the
>>>> writing, but also to move away from an intense focus on individual words &
>>>> word clusters, to allow for more elaborate phrasing & 'speakable' material
>>>> — something that also tended to allow for a more
>>>> politicized/socially-revved up kind of work, but still with my usual
>>>> fascination with disjunctive/disruptive/abnormal language].
>>>>
>>>> *you also said*:
>>>>
>>>> "What the Project has been doing is what the Web is doing now. I have
>>>> had long term collaborations with artists over the years whom I have never
>>>> met. That is the huge positive of the digital world."
>>>>
>>>> [Like I said, my aesthetic preoccupations were shared in the '70s by a
>>>> raft of poets, the ones in my baby-boomer age group being the most
>>>> accessible — & here I'm talking ye olde postal delivery:
>>>>
>>>> most of the so-called 'Language Poets' only knew each other through the
>>>> mail, so one key was getting mailing addresses for people: which led to an
>>>> interesting focus on magazine editors or publishers. Starting out as a poet
>>>> at the beginning of the '70s, with pretty definite notions of what was
>>>> what, that meant not having to rely on the dominant notion of what was
>>>> happening in whatever local 'scene' was in my area. Luckily. Because I
>>>> could get their addresses, it led me to correspondence with editors like
>>>> Jonathan Williams, Dick Higgins, Jerry Rothenberg (Jerry was key: he put me
>>>> in touch with Ron Silliman, in 1971, which jumpstarted what was the first
>>>> extended correspondance of our 'language centered writing' world). (This
>>>> didn't really change until later in the 1970s, when a small handful of
>>>> poets of similar aesthetics began to cohere in NY & in the Bay Area.)
>>>>
>>>>  [And that 'non-localized' or 'un-scene' situation was what Charles
>>>> (Bernstein) & I always

Re: [-empyre-] reply to Murat

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

ch, where instrument drives animation
> in performance is up at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9PkkqOzCf4 or
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si30Iajz4Zs (a collab with Amy & Sophia
> Sobers, whose projections do not appear unfortunately)
>
> "I was thinking about glitch after my post yesterday, but even in
> something that is glitch (in any form), the code functions properly.
> usually these works are aberrations imposed by composer, hardware, or
> software. but it is the surface that contains something
> unexpected/distorted. the code is *able *to do what it is
> instructed/informed to do. glitch is a great cyborgian form, whether
> intentionally created, or not.."
>
> To me, Chris, the above passage reminds me of Medieval (Christian)
> discourse on God and the existence of evil-- [image: ☺] OK! But the
> stakes are not so elevated. I was just rambling on, probably ineffectively,
> a certain topic. As far as making stuff goes, I never think of myself or
> anyone else as taking on the role of god, though I do like the highlighted
> passage of your post below!
>
> God's design is often inscrutable, but always there. Humanity can only
> experience the surface --and sees evil (unexpected/distorted): "What is the
> difference between God and virtual God?" "Virtual God is real." It's the
> software programmer.
>
> Could you elaborate on the following sentence: "glitch is a great
> cyborgian form, whether intentionally created, or not.."
>
>
> Sure. One of the first “theorists” I ever read was Donna Haraway, in 1991
> when we were both living in Santa Cruz. Her Manifesto about Simians,
> Cyborgs, & Women really knocked me out & I kind of took it to heart & mind.
> The idea that so many things are chimeras, hybrids of human & machine, made
> (makes) a lot of sense. So I basically see everything that uses digital
> media non-trivially to be a cyborgian endeavor. That was the reference
> point. Glitch can of course be done non-digitally (with scissors, paint,
> arms, *quod libet*) so it’s not exclusive to computers. I know a few
> people who, using software (as well as output manipulation) do intentional
> glitch work; othertimes, it happens by accident & comes to eyes, ears, etc.
>
> I’m sure I didn’t say enough, or address everything, but that’s it for the
> moment. Bests, CF
>
> On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 1:12 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Bruce, you have hooked up with the Project ten years earlier than me. I
>> had just returned from living in London for almost two years (and I had
>> said to my wife Karen that if I don't see another beautiful green park in
>> my life I'll be happy). I wanted to go to a poetry event in New York. It
>> was Wednesday, and at the Project Paul Auster was presenting his
>> anthology of French poetry that he had edited with multiple readers (to me
>> the most memorable was Armand Schwerner reading his Michaux
>> translations). That was it. I became friends with Bob Rosenthal and
>> Simon Pettet who had introduced Paul, and we created The Committee for
>> International Poetry. That was another adventure.
>>
>> I agree with you about the ups and down of the Project. We all heard our
>> share of boring stuff there. I did doze off occasionally but the place
>> always seemed to come through. A lot of poets, artists came from different
>> parts of the States and the world and learned from and collaborated with
>> each other.
>>
>> What the Project has been doing is what the Web is doing now. I have had
>> long term collaborations with artists over the years whom I have never met.
>> That is the huge positive of the digital world.
>>
>> "We did want to focus attention on language itself as the medium, but
>> I'm not ready to embrace some of your characterization:  words & letters
>> are not non-referential, but we liked to organize them in other ways beside
>> what they were pointing to (which was too often, for us, the author's
>> personalizing experience or expressiveness or traditional lyric
>> expectations). We tended to want the readers' experience at the center —
>> which cuts against some of this binary of yours about the sensual,
>> movement-based vs. logical aspects of language"
>>
>> Bruce, when you say "We tended to want the readers' experience at the
>> center," are you saying anything different than saying "I want the text at
>> the center," the reader reading the text? The question interests me because
>> in my essay The Peripheral Space of Photo

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

 right after arriving in NYC in 1975, to take a job as a
> Political Science professor [American Imperialism my specialty] wch lasted
> 38 of the 41 years since).
>
> The so-called 'Language Poets' actually tended to question whether the
> consensus 'New York School/Beat' styles honored at the PProject was really
> still devoted to adventurously "exploring the outer limits and
> possibilities" of the medium: our aesthetics had taken shape in the early
> to mid 1970s, mostly outside of NY & hashed out in the mail rather than
> face to face in any community 'scene'. We did want to focus attention on
> language itself as the medium, but I'm not ready to embrace some of your
> characterization:  words & letters are not non-referential, but we liked to
> organize them in other ways beside what they were pointing to (which was
> too often, for us, the author's personalizing experience or expressiveness
> or traditional lyric expectations). We tended to want the readers'
> experience at the center — which cuts against some of this binary of yours
> about the sensual, movement-based vs. logical aspects of language. If I had
> to choose sides there, I'd always go with movement & the sensory, as a way
> to 'volatilize' & 'capacitate' its potential readers; my own writing
> certainly doesn't get much acclaim for being "logical". But I'd rather step
> outside any polemical wrangling about the poetry we do & keep things
> focused on the digital front:  for instance, whether an online presentation
> tends to help or hinder the kinds of reading that put movement & the senses
> in the forefront.
>
> On your question:  I don't think that verbal language is basically a
> self-referential system; instead, it seems more like a messy hybrid. And so
> is what happens via the computer & the web: this may be distinctive as a
> linguistic/communicative arrangement, but that's not exactly what I see in
> the idea of it creating its own system. So if there's an "exchange" it's a
> mutual bending (which might be way too mutually disruptive to warrant being
> called a "synthesis"). Maybe that's more like the relationship between a
> 'dialect' & an 'official' language — [and by the way, doesn't "the
> dialectic" typically end up in a synthesis]?
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 8:58 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> I have known these week's guest participants or been familiar with their
>> works for years. They have all been, directly or indirectly,  part of the
>> Poetry Project poetry and art community. A spirit of adventure exploring
>> the outer limits and possibilities each of his or her own media that has
>> been the characteristic of the place since 1960's for fifty years permeates
>> all of them.
>>
>> I met Chris Funkhauser first in 1994 during a Poetry Project symposium on
>> "Revolutionary Poetry." He and his friend Belle Gironde --both University
>> of Albany students at the time-- along with three other young people had
>> organized an "unofficial" workshop on "Poetry and Technology" that, if I
>> remember correctly, had set up its tent out in the garden of the church. I
>> was a member of the final panel that presented overviews of the symposium.
>> As part of my preparation, I visited the workshop. I was so struck by what
>> they were doing, by the spirit of Dada in their manifesto of the virtual
>> --yes, the possibilities of a virtual poetry was infused with Dada mojo at
>> the time-- that I spent a final, significant portion of my talk on that
>> workshop. I felt what the workshop was saying contained a significant
>> portion of the revolutionary spirit the symposium was searching for. Chris
>> and I remained friends ever since. Interestingly, Bruce Andrews, the second
>> guest participant this week, was another member of that panel also.
>>
>> Here are two passages from "Takes or Mis-takes from the Revolutionary
>> Symposium, The Poetry Project, May 5-8, 1994," the second being its ending.
>> The talk consisted of quotations from the symposium (peppered with my
>> reactions):
>>
>> "What's the difference between God and virtual God?"
>> "Virtual God is real." It's the software programer.
>>
>> "From The Poetry and Technology workshop: 'Give free shit to lure them….
>> Commodity lives," Eric Swensen, the 'Enema' of Necro Enema Amalgamated,
>> producers of the manifesto BLAM!"
>>
>> Bruce Andrew was with Charles Bernstein the co-editor of the ground
>> 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Sally,

Amazing the spelling errors I made. I just apologize. Yes, Marat! I even
had problems with my name in Turkey. Being in the original a Iranian name,
the "Nemet" part of my family name is very unusual in Turkey also. Because
of that, it was consistently miss[elled as "Mehmet" which is a very common
Turkish name. As Chris said, the spelling of names are very fluid and
fungible. My father, my brother and myself each spell our family name
differently. This is partly due to the sound shift in names that occurs
from Iranian to Turkish. "D"s become "t"s. Having born in Iran, my father
kept the "d" sound, etc., etc. I can go on forever on that subject.

Thank you very much for your response to my comments on your dancing. I
wrote them with some trepidation. I am not an expert on dancing. I wrote
about what struck me in your dancing. Critics are sometimes caught in their
habits, within the reference points from which they come. I am glad that my
words made a difference for you.

Starting with my essay *The Peripheral Space of Photography*, the majority
the work I do starts with a response to something else, a film *The
Spiritual Life of Replicants*), a play (*Animals of Dawn*), photographs,
someone else's writings ("Eleven Septembers Later: *Film Lumiere*, Readings
on Benjamin Hollander's *Vigilance*), etc. In that way, they are
collaborations. In fact, translations from Turkish poetry and the poetics
of *Eda* I developed from them, constitute an extended collaboration with/
meditation on the Turkish language.

I think you will find Chris's work multi-faceted, always developing, in
fascinating ways full of contradictions.

Looking forward to further exchanges with you and others.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 10:11 AM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Murat,
>
> We were in the back room at St. Marks, where most of the readings/talks
> are held, which I may have flubbed the name on. It has been a really long
> time since I've been there!
>
> Personally I see imperfect ion & failure as 2 different things: failure
> implying having (set) a specific objective to achieve ( in advance ) & not
> being able to reach it, imperfection means things didn't go as
> planned/expected, perhaps as result of human error.
>
> I was truly enthused about working with the NJIT/Rutgers-Newark Theatre
> Dept. on a production of the code opera Sonny Rae Tempest composed once I
> heard Director Louis Wells' motto, "we're not afraid to fail". to me this
> meant they were willing to take risks, & if it didn't work out, so be it.
> new, exciting things might get born this way. the code opera is Pretty
> usual & ridiculous, VERY Dada, & the first musical scores we rendered were
> awful (white noise). I was imagining we might empty the house in 3-5
> minutes, so it was good & liberating to work w/someone who took this
> approach.
>
> I was thinking about glitch after my post yesterday, but even in something
> that is glitch (in any form), the code functions properly. usually these
> works are aberrations imposed by composer, hardware, or software. but it is
> the surface that contains something unexpected/distorted. the code is *able
> *to do what it is instructed/informed to do. glitch is a great cyborgian
> form, whether intentionally created, or not...
>
> It may be that my architect friend was saying that things minor adjustment
> could be required or made in the construction phase. He's not the lazy
> sort, I'll have to ask for an elaboration some time.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 3:35 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Chris, I apologize for the typo. I was writing the introduction six
>> o'clock in the morning since I had to be at Kennedy Airport very early. And
>> I did use "tent" metaphorically, but are you sure it was inside Parish
>> Hall? I remember it being somewhere in the boondocks. Like quite a few
>> others, I seem to have disappeared from the PoPro list a few years ago
>> also. Finally, I attributed my case to bad breath.
>>
>> Yes, perhaps the final struggle is "between algorithm/perfection) &
>> human/imperfection." We should pursue it further on. But in *Blade
>> Runner*, even the super human androids are imperfect. They must die.
>> That is the pathos of that film, and also perhaps our ultimate salvation.
>> If you have followed the discussions the previous weeks this month, I was
>> talking about the possibility of a poetics of "failure&qu

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--But, Michael, are ordinary and imperfect the same thing?

Murat

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 5:47 PM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Finitude (Agamben) and imperfection are the defining qualities of the
> ordinary, which, Emerson tells us, we have yet to acknowledge as our
> condition. Hence we keep screwing up.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Nov 22, 2016, at 3:35 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Chris, I apologize for the typo. I was writing the introduction six
> o'clock in the morning since I had to be at Kennedy Airport very early. And
> I did use "tent" metaphorically, but are you sure it was inside Parish
> Hall? I remember it being somewhere in the boondocks. Like quite a few
> others, I seem to have disappeared from the PoPro list a few years ago
> also. Finally, I attributed my case to bad breath.
>
> Yes, perhaps the final struggle is "between algorithm/perfection) &
> human/imperfection." We should pursue it further on. But in *Blade Runner*,
> even the super human androids are imperfect. They must die. That is the
> pathos of that film, and also perhaps our ultimate salvation. If you have
> followed the discussions the previous weeks this month, I was talking about
> the possibility of a poetics of "failure" or "inefficiency" which may be
> close to what you mean by ?imperfection." We were also discussing about
> "glitches" in the algorithmic structures. You say that can not be. Do you
> mean they are impossible or not permitted?
>
> What that architect was telling you sounded more like "laziness," an over
> trust of machines. That's why so many buildings are, as Jean Renoir says,
> boring.
>
> Good beginning. Welcome to Empyre, Chris.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
> christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>>
>> Murat: nice intro, thanks. I'm humored by your recollection of the St.
>> Marks event. We were, however, definitely at a table in the Parish
>> Hall--though we may as well have been in a tent! Until about 1998 I was
>> often invited to perform at the Poetry Project, but since then, not once!
>> This nearly coincides with when I started teaching in Newark, oddly enough.
>> Being an academic at a middle-class state school has its perks but probably
>> also its downsides (at least in terms of getting gigs at the PoProj).
>>
>> We have known each other a long while, had many exchanges & social
>> adventures. I've recorded & produced your work on CD, CD-ROM, etc., etc. &
>> yet after all that there's a typo in my name in the subject line
>> here--which is fine, considering I have no belief in perfection. (& I have
>> never cared about the spelling of my last name, which is already a
>> bastardization of the original--in fact your spelling is true to the
>> original but is not what appears my birth certificate!). From my pov there
>> are only a few things in life that require perfection, one of which is
>> computer code. Thankfully the corporations in charge make it so that most
>> people never have to deal with code, how nice. I had dinner with an
>> architect the other night, who was explaining even his plans didn't have to
>> be perfect (which I thought was strange). Building designs can be
>> imperfect, code can't! So maybe the certainly possible (imo) "exchange" you
>> ask Bruce about is a dialog between algorithm/perfection) &
>> human/imperfection. I like that, something like that, think like that.
>> Towards cyborgian synthesis, yah.
>>
>> I believe that we are supposed to start off by posting a statement (&
>> bio?), so OK, here:
>>
>> Call what I do research. On a couple of occasions I’ve stepped up &
>> presented books that helped me & hopefully others understand the world of
>> digital writing from a historical perspective. *Prehistoric Digital
>> Poetry *(https://monoskop.org/log/?p=179), a dozen years in the making,
>> was done with the intent that it would outlast me. It will. Most of the
>> time, though, I’m a momentary doer/maker rather than a sayer...
>>
>>
>> Beyond life as poet & multimedia artist I play various musical
>> instruments, mainly bass (& some voice), in an unnamed completely
>> improvisational trio, which is such a potent form of 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Chris, I apologize for the typo. I was writing the introduction six o'clock
in the morning since I had to be at Kennedy Airport very early. And I did
use "tent" metaphorically, but are you sure it was inside Parish Hall? I
remember it being somewhere in the boondocks. Like quite a few others, I
seem to have disappeared from the PoPro list a few years ago also. Finally,
I attributed my case to bad breath.

Yes, perhaps the final struggle is "between algorithm/perfection) &
human/imperfection." We should pursue it further on. But in *Blade Runner*,
even the super human androids are imperfect. They must die. That is the
pathos of that film, and also perhaps our ultimate salvation. If you have
followed the discussions the previous weeks this month, I was talking about
the possibility of a poetics of "failure" or "inefficiency" which may be
close to what you mean by ?imperfection." We were also discussing about
"glitches" in the algorithmic structures. You say that can not be. Do you
mean they are impossible or not permitted?

What that architect was telling you sounded more like "laziness," an over
trust of machines. That's why so many buildings are, as Jean Renoir says,
boring.

Good beginning. Welcome to Empyre, Chris.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
> Murat: nice intro, thanks. I'm humored by your recollection of the St.
> Marks event. We were, however, definitely at a table in the Parish
> Hall--though we may as well have been in a tent! Until about 1998 I was
> often invited to perform at the Poetry Project, but since then, not once!
> This nearly coincides with when I started teaching in Newark, oddly enough.
> Being an academic at a middle-class state school has its perks but probably
> also its downsides (at least in terms of getting gigs at the PoProj).
>
> We have known each other a long while, had many exchanges & social
> adventures. I've recorded & produced your work on CD, CD-ROM, etc., etc. &
> yet after all that there's a typo in my name in the subject line
> here--which is fine, considering I have no belief in perfection. (& I have
> never cared about the spelling of my last name, which is already a
> bastardization of the original--in fact your spelling is true to the
> original but is not what appears my birth certificate!). From my pov there
> are only a few things in life that require perfection, one of which is
> computer code. Thankfully the corporations in charge make it so that most
> people never have to deal with code, how nice. I had dinner with an
> architect the other night, who was explaining even his plans didn't have to
> be perfect (which I thought was strange). Building designs can be
> imperfect, code can't! So maybe the certainly possible (imo) "exchange" you
> ask Bruce about is a dialog between algorithm/perfection) &
> human/imperfection. I like that, something like that, think like that.
> Towards cyborgian synthesis, yah.
>
> I believe that we are supposed to start off by posting a statement (&
> bio?), so OK, here:
>
> Call what I do research. On a couple of occasions I’ve stepped up &
> presented books that helped me & hopefully others understand the world of
> digital writing from a historical perspective. *Prehistoric Digital
> Poetry *(https://monoskop.org/log/?p=179), a dozen years in the making,
> was done with the intent that it would outlast me. It will. Most of the
> time, though, I’m a momentary doer/maker rather than a sayer...
>
>
> Beyond life as poet & multimedia artist I play various musical
> instruments, mainly bass (& some voice), in an unnamed completely
> improvisational trio, which is such a potent form of expression. This is
> part of what I had to say with them last friday, in our first post-election
> jam:
>
>
> https://soundcloud.com/fnkhsr/edge
>
>
> My work in audio production, documentarian & artistic, started in the late
> 80s & continues—I’m a contributing editor at PennSound, & earlier this year
> I performed a sound collage at the Whitney Museum’s Open Plan: Cecil Taylor
> exhibit (Fred Moten & I also hosted a listening session at the event).
>
> Since early this summer I’ve been working intensively with Chuck Stein,
> who I’ve known since 1992. We recorded more than 18 hours of his poetry (a
> retrospective anthology), phase one of a project on its way to PennSound
> (part two will be Chuck reading all of Olson’s *MAXIMUS*, apparently from
> back to front). In 2015 I did a similar project with Peter Lamborn Wilson,
> recording 600 of his poems for PennSound (http://writing.upenn.edu/
> pennsound/x/Wilson.php).
>
> About a year ago I was lucky to get a grant from my employer, NJIT, to
> fund research in interactive digital audio (under the title “Expressive and
> Documentary Interactive Audio in the Humanities”). I’ve been 

[-empyre-] Starting the Fourth Week: Chris Funkhauser, Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
I have known these week's guest participants or been familiar with their works 
for years. They have all been, directly or indirectly,  part of the Poetry 
Project poetry and art community. A spirit of adventure exploring the outer 
limits and possibilities each of his or her own media that has been the 
characteristic of the place since 1960's for fifty years permeates all of them.

I met Chris Funkhauser first in 1994 during a Poetry Project symposium on 
"Revolutionary Poetry." He and his friend Belle Gironde --both University of 
Albany students at the time-- along with three other young people had organized 
an "unofficial" workshop on "Poetry and Technology" that, if I remember 
correctly, had set up its tent out in the garden of the church. I was a member 
of the final panel that presented overviews of the symposium. As part of my 
preparation, I visited the workshop. I was so struck by what they were doing, 
by the spirit of Dada in their manifesto of the virtual --yes, the 
possibilities of a virtual poetry was infused with Dada mojo at the time-- that 
I spent a final, significant portion of my talk on that workshop. I felt what 
the workshop was saying contained a significant portion of the revolutionary 
spirit the symposium was searching for. Chris and I remained friends ever 
since. Interestingly, Bruce Andrews, the second guest participant this week, 
was another member of that panel also.

Here are two passages from "Takes or Mis-takes from the Revolutionary 
Symposium, The Poetry Project, May 5-8, 1994," the second being its ending. The 
talk consisted of quotations from the symposium (peppered with my reactions):

"What's the difference between God and virtual God?"
"Virtual God is real." It's the software programer.

"From The Poetry and Technology workshop: 'Give free shit to lure them…. 
Commodity lives," Eric Swensen, the 'Enema' of Necro Enema Amalgamated, 
producers of the manifesto BLAM!"

Bruce Andrew was with Charles Bernstein the co-editor of the ground breaking 
poetry magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E which, as the "=" signs in the title implies, 
ushered a new attitude towards poetry and language. Letters, words relate more 
to each other than to a referential point outside. The result was the 
transforming (and influential on younger poets) poetry movement Language School 
of which Bruce is a key member. As a poet, I have had serious disagreements 
with strict (in my view, almost fundementalist) take on language the movement 
embodies. I come from the East (Turkey). Though equally exploring, my view of 
language is different, more sensual, based on movement than logic. I tried to 
bring these qualities to English language and American poetry though my concept 
of Eda. On the other, I must admit the poetry of my friends in the States 
inevitably bent the direction of my work. I believe Eda will do, and is already 
doing, the same even though though the effect is not totally visible yet.

There is one question I  would like very much Bruce to explore, if at all 
possible, among many others. The computer seems to create its own 
linguistic/communicative system. If verbal language also is basically a 
self-referential system, how do you see the possibility of exchange between 
these two entities? Is it at all, possible? If so, what has to bend to 
accommodate the other? In other words, is the relationship towards synthesis or 
always dialectical?

I saw Sally Silvers dance for the first time years ago during a Poetry Project 
New Years' Day Marathon. I was immediate struck by the uniqueness and 
originality of her dance. Over the years I tried to answer that question 
because I felt it said something important, not only about but beyond dance. 
Gradually, a picture emerged. Even watching avant-garde or "experimental" 
dancers, I always feel that their movements are rehashed, coming out of a 
repertoire of established avant grade movements. There was nothing of that in 
Sally Silver's dancing. Every movement was itself, nothing  more, nothing less. 
The movements had a solidity, embodying the reality of gravity that run through 
them and shaped them. That earth bound clarity was a thrilling thing to see. I 
am looking forward to what she has to say about dance or anything else.

All the Empyre members, welcome to the fourth week.

Ciao,
Murat

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--It's very sad.

Murat

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 9:05 PM, Maria Damon <damon...@umn.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> oh no!
>
> On 11/21/16 8:50 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
>
> I have very bad news. Extraordinary writer, equally extraordinary human
> being and a member of the editorial board and contributor to *Dispatches* 
> *Benjamin
> Hollander* sadly passed away today. Those who know him will mourn him
> deeply.
>
> Murat
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 8:13 PM, Craig Saper <csa...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Yes, somehow Dispatches and DIU and this essay seemed distant or at least
>> in a future instead of upon us and beyond us.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Nov 21, 2016, at 3:42 PM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
>> christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> AH  -  nice to know
>>
>> if you never saw DIU, you might get a kick out of it. or not!
>> http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/diu/
>>
>> we were much egged on by Don Byrd, who wrote the sailing intro to the
>> project:
>>
>> Posthuman Nation / Knowledge and Noise
>>
>>
>> * The function of the traditional university is conservative. It
>> collects, archives, judges, and redistributes the culture hoard. In times
>> of stability, it works well. It keeps track of every hint of innovation and
>> tests it brutally. Even most of the good ideas are found lacking. In times
>> of dramatic change, however, the traditional university is worthless or
>> worse than worthless, because first it rejects precisely the new ideas and
>> new knowledges that are required, and then, after change is unavoidable, it
>> opens itself more or less uncritically to every fad. Once its tradition of
>> wisdom is in question, it has no grounds for judgment. In an important
>> document from the 1960's, "On the Poverty of Student Life," an anonymous
>> essay by members of the Situationist International and students of the
>> University of Strasbourg, we read: Once upon a time the universities had a
>> certain prestige; the students persist in the belief that they are lucky to
>> be there. But they came too late. Their mechanical, specialized education
>> is as profoundly degraded (in relation to the former level of general
>> bourgeois culture) as their own intellectual level, because the modern
>> economic system demands a mass production of uneducated students who have
>> been rendered incapable of thinking. The university has become an
>> institutional organization of the ignorance; "high culture" itself is being
>> degraded in the assembly-line production of professors, all of whom are
>> cretins and most of whom would get the bird from any audience of
>> highschoolers. Since that time, students have come increasingly to doubt
>> that they are privileged. They have lost the sense of themselves as the
>> producers of education and think they are consumers as they are consumers
>> of everything else in their world. The institution accommodates them or
>> even encourages their misconception. Rather than teaching how to think, it
>> offers an array of finished thoughts from which the students choose, as
>> they choose from shoes. The rapacious prosperity of the 50's and 60's was
>> generated by the production of the immoral equivalent war and time in the
>> world economy (the World War that began in 1914 never ended). The arms race
>> had the dual effect of generating widespread prosperity in the West and
>> eventually bankrupting the Soviet Union, now leaving the filthy rich in
>> unopposed control of the world. "Ðthe world's 358 billionaires have a
>> combined net worth of $760 billion, equal to that of the bottom 45 percent
>> of the world's population" (Richard J. Barnet). With the fear of a
>> worldwide communist movement whipping up class hatred removed, the liberal
>> concessions to the working-class and the poor are revoked. The masses are
>> controlled by an organized assault on the attentions by the media, drugs,
>> fear of difference packaged as religion, misdirected education, and random
>> law enforcement. The focus of consciousness is dulled and its continuity
>> disrupted. It is thus not possible for the exploited even to recognize
>> their exploitation or to have a language in which thei

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--I have very bad news. Extraordinary writer, equally extraordinary human
being and a member of the editorial board and contributor to
*Dispatches* *Benjamin
Hollander* sadly passed away today. Those who know him will mourn him
deeply.

Murat



On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 8:13 PM, Craig Saper  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Yes, somehow Dispatches and DIU and this essay seemed distant or at least
> in a future instead of upon us and beyond us.
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 21, 2016, at 3:42 PM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
> christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> AH  -  nice to know
>
> if you never saw DIU, you might get a kick out of it. or not!
> http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/diu/
>
> we were much egged on by Don Byrd, who wrote the sailing intro to the
> project:
>
> Posthuman Nation / Knowledge and Noise
>
>
> * The function of the traditional university is conservative. It collects,
> archives, judges, and redistributes the culture hoard. In times of
> stability, it works well. It keeps track of every hint of innovation and
> tests it brutally. Even most of the good ideas are found lacking. In times
> of dramatic change, however, the traditional university is worthless or
> worse than worthless, because first it rejects precisely the new ideas and
> new knowledges that are required, and then, after change is unavoidable, it
> opens itself more or less uncritically to every fad. Once its tradition of
> wisdom is in question, it has no grounds for judgment. In an important
> document from the 1960's, "On the Poverty of Student Life," an anonymous
> essay by members of the Situationist International and students of the
> University of Strasbourg, we read: Once upon a time the universities had a
> certain prestige; the students persist in the belief that they are lucky to
> be there. But they came too late. Their mechanical, specialized education
> is as profoundly degraded (in relation to the former level of general
> bourgeois culture) as their own intellectual level, because the modern
> economic system demands a mass production of uneducated students who have
> been rendered incapable of thinking. The university has become an
> institutional organization of the ignorance; "high culture" itself is being
> degraded in the assembly-line production of professors, all of whom are
> cretins and most of whom would get the bird from any audience of
> highschoolers. Since that time, students have come increasingly to doubt
> that they are privileged. They have lost the sense of themselves as the
> producers of education and think they are consumers as they are consumers
> of everything else in their world. The institution accommodates them or
> even encourages their misconception. Rather than teaching how to think, it
> offers an array of finished thoughts from which the students choose, as
> they choose from shoes. The rapacious prosperity of the 50's and 60's was
> generated by the production of the immoral equivalent war and time in the
> world economy (the World War that began in 1914 never ended). The arms race
> had the dual effect of generating widespread prosperity in the West and
> eventually bankrupting the Soviet Union, now leaving the filthy rich in
> unopposed control of the world. "Ðthe world's 358 billionaires have a
> combined net worth of $760 billion, equal to that of the bottom 45 percent
> of the world's population" (Richard J. Barnet). With the fear of a
> worldwide communist movement whipping up class hatred removed, the liberal
> concessions to the working-class and the poor are revoked. The masses are
> controlled by an organized assault on the attentions by the media, drugs,
> fear of difference packaged as religion, misdirected education, and random
> law enforcement. The focus of consciousness is dulled and its continuity
> disrupted. It is thus not possible for the exploited even to recognize
> their exploitation or to have a language in which their dissatisfaction can
> be articulated. Their self-expression, like every thing else, is sold to
> them in the form of talk radio, gangsta rap, grunge rock, escapist movies,
> as well as all of the merchandise in the shopping mall. Underwear and
> chocolates are forms of self-expression. Consumption is the only sanctioned
> mode of identity. The world is now organized to serve the immortality of
> the billionaires or their children and grandchildren. The scenarios are
> numerous, most of them, like most sci-fi scenarios, no doubt too probable.
> Consider: a century hence, when the earth is so polluted that the working
> stiffs of the world will be groggy with bad air and contaminated food and
> water, and the great artificial environments of the billionaires will be in
> danger of breaking-down beyond the abilities of the impaired maintenance
> crews to fix them, the 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Thank you, Chris. Here is another post from Michael Boghn that I was on the
verge of posting to Empyre because Michael had not done it himself when
yours arrived:

"Breaking news at Dispatches from the Poetry Wars

*Sharon Thesen answers the Canlit Moralists*

"If Galloway’s behaviour was becoming destructively problematic, he should
> have been counselled by his colleagues to quit it, on pain of official
> reprimand. If an official reprimand or clear warning had preceded the
> dismissal, there would probably have been some, but not nearly as much,
> concern about due process."


Read the rest at:

http://dispatchespoetry.com/home/recent/news

Also check out the Pobiz Stock Index update from 31 October 2016 on the
collapse of Creative Writing & MFA, Inc.'s share value.:

http://dispatchespoetry.com/articles/dispatches/2016/11/796

Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, a real stinker if there ever was one"

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 3:42 PM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> AH  -  nice to know
>
> if you never saw DIU, you might get a kick out of it. or not!
> http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/diu/
>
> we were much egged on by Don Byrd, who wrote the sailing intro to the
> project:
>
> Posthuman Nation / Knowledge and Noise
>
> * The function of the traditional university is conservative. It collects,
> archives, judges, and redistributes the culture hoard. In times of
> stability, it works well. It keeps track of every hint of innovation and
> tests it brutally. Even most of the good ideas are found lacking. In times
> of dramatic change, however, the traditional university is worthless or
> worse than worthless, because first it rejects precisely the new ideas and
> new knowledges that are required, and then, after change is unavoidable, it
> opens itself more or less uncritically to every fad. Once its tradition of
> wisdom is in question, it has no grounds for judgment. In an important
> document from the 1960's, "On the Poverty of Student Life," an anonymous
> essay by members of the Situationist International and students of the
> University of Strasbourg, we read: Once upon a time the universities had a
> certain prestige; the students persist in the belief that they are lucky to
> be there. But they came too late. Their mechanical, specialized education
> is as profoundly degraded (in relation to the former level of general
> bourgeois culture) as their own intellectual level, because the modern
> economic system demands a mass production of uneducated students who have
> been rendered incapable of thinking. The university has become an
> institutional organization of the ignorance; "high culture" itself is being
> degraded in the assembly-line production of professors, all of whom are
> cretins and most of whom would get the bird from any audience of
> highschoolers. Since that time, students have come increasingly to doubt
> that they are privileged. They have lost the sense of themselves as the
> producers of education and think they are consumers as they are consumers
> of everything else in their world. The institution accommodates them or
> even encourages their misconception. Rather than teaching how to think, it
> offers an array of finished thoughts from which the students choose, as
> they choose from shoes. The rapacious prosperity of the 50's and 60's was
> generated by the production of the immoral equivalent war and time in the
> world economy (the World War that began in 1914 never ended). The arms race
> had the dual effect of generating widespread prosperity in the West and
> eventually bankrupting the Soviet Union, now leaving the filthy rich in
> unopposed control of the world. "Ðthe world's 358 billionaires have a
> combined net worth of $760 billion, equal to that of the bottom 45 percent
> of the world's population" (Richard J. Barnet). With the fear of a
> worldwide communist movement whipping up class hatred removed, the liberal
> concessions to the working-class and the poor are revoked. The masses are
> controlled by an organized assault on the attentions by the media, drugs,
> fear of difference packaged as religion, misdirected education, and random
> law enforcement. The focus of consciousness is dulled and its continuity
> disrupted. It is thus not possible for the exploited even to recognize
> their exploitation or to have a language in which their dissatisfaction can
> be articulated. Their self-expression, like every thing else, is sold to
> them in the form of talk radio, gangsta rap, grunge rock, escapist movies,
> as well as all of the merchandise in the shopping mall. Underwear and
> chocolates are forms of self-expression. Consumption is the only sanctioned
> mode of identity. The world is now organized to serve the immortality of
> the billionaires or their children and grandchildren. The 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--No moderator, no guest moderator, no glitches!

Murat

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 3:20 PM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@rogers.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Chris -- maybe I got it wrong -- someone gave me the Latin -- but the
> banner is supposed to read No Long List, No Short List, No Guest List. It
> was a slogan I came up with for the Friggin Poetry Award, of which there
> has to date been only one. DIU is Latin for long.
>
> I am glad to hear you are enjoying Dispatches. You should send something
> when you get a chance.
>
> On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 8:10 AM, Funkhouser, Christopher T. <
> christopher.t.funkhou...@njit.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Michael,
>> I've been meaning to say that I've been following Dispatches fairly
>> closely from the beginning, & there's much to enjoy in there...
>> You got my attention right away with the masthead/crest, emblazoned, in
>> part, with the curious phrase (w/obscure reference) "non DIU list' (DIU an
>> irreverent project Ben Friedlander & I worked on together as grad
>> students). I'm sure Jack Clarke wouldn't have approved of DIU (as did a lot
>> of others), & yes flaws in our approach.
>> What you are doing with Dispatches is far more respectable, & glad to see
>> issues being kept alive & muck getting kicked up
>> -Chris F
>>
>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@rogers.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> Murat, Dispatches is not a blog, at least not in my reckoning. Nor, I
>>> think, in Kent's. . Blogs are a singular voice, even when they become an
>>> information clearing house. Neither is it strictly spealking a
>>> curated/edited instrument, which also a controlled zone.We saw Dipatches
>>> from the beginning as more of a place for a conversation to take place. I
>>> was motivated to match what Jack Clarke did with intent. and Ken Warren did
>>> with House Organ. intent. especially was an active zone of multiple
>>> intersecting vectors of thought. Jack's spirit informed it by opening it
>>> into time and space and welcoming a diverse community into a world of talk,
>>> thinking, and document.
>>>
>>> So with Dispatches, we try to keep the conversations open to various
>>> modes of address that are part of a being in common: critical commentary,
>>> poetry, video, satire, letters. It's really not a question of fighting
>>> anything. It's more a question of priming something. getting enough people
>>> to see it as a useful and interesting place that they can participate in so
>>> that the energy takes on a life of its own. A place you want to hang out
>>> and maybe say something every once in while. Explore some stuff in the
>>> basement.
>>>
>>> And the question of speed comes up again here in a different light.
>>> Everything happens quickly, much more quickly than with a print
>>> publication. Conversations can move almost as quickly as you can keep up
>>> with them. Something happens.
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>> Yes, Michael, we do need to simplify (not necessarily be simplistic)
>>>> not to miss the forest for the trees.
>>>>
>>>> For instance, you mention the "potential" of the computer. Hasn't the
>>>> vector of this potential has been essentially in the reverse order towards
>>>> increasingly restrictive. You have rightly mentioned the access the net
>>>> provided for us to get to know people that we would not have known
>>>> otherwise. That is truly a positive revolutionary achievement. But let us
>>>> examine the progression in use of social exchange structures on the web--
>>>> from  lists to blogs to facebook, each one more restricive than the other.
>>>> On lists, one could have discussions because each response kicked that
>>>> topic back to the top for easy access. When blogs first appeared they felt
>>>> great, as a medium of self expression. I think we are mostly familiar of
>>>> long stretches of time when the response box of the blog remains empty
>>>> --the blog surviving at best as a space of meditation.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Michael, I am not denying that the computer will have some undeniably
positive results. Probably, a few illnesses that are incurable today will
be curable relatively soon, essentially due to the computer's power to
calculate (though I am not sure how many will be able to afford those
cures). Mine is not a Luddite argument. Reality is what it is. We must
adjust.

What is Virtual Light? Amazing, something like virtual God?

Pattern recogniition -- is that something that will make it for us harder
to hide?  :)

Ciao,
Murat


On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> It's the difference between William Gibson and Richard Morgan. My son has
> been reading Gibson and making me go back and read stuff I hadn't before.
> He always seems to leave room for some more positive possibility in the
> midst of the dystopia. Virtual Light, for instance, with its Bridge
> culture, or Pattern Recognition. Even Idoru which is perhaps relevant to
> this discussion. Morgan, as much as I love his books, doesn't hold out much
> alternative to the bleakness he represents.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Nov 20, 2016, at 1:26 PM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> > At the same time, there's a critique of the dystopian vision: it
> > discourages imagining alternatives. I know that, in the world of
> > sci-fi, a writer like Kim Stanley Robinson makes it a point to provide
> > utopian elements in his work, to make better futures a little more
> > plausible (and therefore, worth working for). He came into the field
> > at the time of TINA (Margaret Thatcher's slogan about Capitalism:
> > "there is no alternative"). It often explores post-capitalist
> > economies -- the technology in them being used to facilitate their
> > workings. (I'm guessing his work is, in part, motivated by a desire to
> > provide an alternative to the near dominance of dystopia as a mode of
> > the sf of his moment.) Anyway, such writing would view technology, as
> > Michael alluded to, as something that can harm or help. Murat, is your
> > position that it's too late for that?
> >
> >> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >> Jerome, capitalism and war created the computer, not the Communist
> state or an agrarian utopia-- and a desire to penetrate a code. One should
> pay attention how things are created --one discovers a lot about their
> purposes. I talk about in in an earlier post. Isn't the same thing with
> Facebook, to peek into the private activities of a college girls dormitory.
> Isn't that original impulse written all over what Facebook has become
> despite all the "social media" goodies it offers --to penetrate the
> personal activities of one's essentially private, intimate lives, create
> data out of them and sell it. The primary impulse of Facebook --the raison
> d'etre of its flourishing personhood-- is to make the private public and
> social interactions short and infinite. In a very few years, it has
> created a Brave New World and we are all caught in it.
> >>
> >> Ciao,
> >> Murat
> >>
> >>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 11:48 AM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >>> Murat, your comment brought another question to my mind, especially
> >>> because it alludes to the transformation of businesses. Working in the
> >>> corporate world for many years, I know that businesses found digital
> >>> technology irresistible because it was a tool that saved them lots of
> >>> money. It helped eliminate lots of jobs and made outsourcing, near
> >>> shore and far, much easier. As a result, it's hard for me to separate
> >>> the growth of this technology from the capitalism's desire to increase
> >>> profits by cutting costs. So the question for me is -- is it
> >>> technology per se that's the problem, or the way capitalism uses it?
> >>>
> >>>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 10:38 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <
> mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >>>> Michael, I do not agree with you. What makes it different is the
> incredible speed with which things are happening. There is no time to catch
>

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Yes, Michael, we do need to simplify (not necessarily be simplistic) not to
miss the forest for the trees.

For instance, you mention the "potential" of the computer. Hasn't the
vector of this potential has been essentially in the reverse order towards
increasingly restrictive. You have rightly mentioned the access the net
provided for us to get to know people that we would not have known
otherwise. That is truly a positive revolutionary achievement. But let us
examine the progression in use of social exchange structures on the web--
from  lists to blogs to facebook, each one more restricive than the other.
On lists, one could have discussions because each response kicked that
topic back to the top for easy access. When blogs first appeared they felt
great, as a medium of self expression. I think we are mostly familiar of
long stretches of time when the response box of the blog remains empty
--the blog surviving at best as a space of meditation.

Of course, a blog like *Dispatches* is an exception to that. You are
fighting against the entropy of the form, turning it upside down. I would
very much like to know how you achieve that, what kind of effort does
involve. That's why I was so happy when you accepted to be a guest
participant.

As for facebook, every comment almost immediately disappears in the flow of
time. Facebook has no practical mechanism of retrieval, therefore, no
memore. Time is made of pointillistic instances of time. That's why I was
so surprised and intrigued that you were able to sustain memorable, life
changing exchanges on facebook, rather than on lists (as it was with Poetry
Wars) or even blogs. How did you do that, Michael?

You also say, "... But another facet of that is the weakening of
foundationalisms and their dogma. I worry about overly moralizing these
questions where the inevitable outcome is a foregone dystopia."

Can you say that with the awesome,  increasing presence and affect of Isil
in the world, essentially through their use of communication on the web?

If we do not moralize --in the sense of assessing its human cost-- about a
medium that shapes our lives so deeply, what should we moralize about?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 1:06 PM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> I think that's a bit too simple, Murat. Lots of things created the
> computer. Just as it has lots of uses. Certainly its use in war and its
> presence as a commodity have been extremely important in its development,
> but they don't own it. Again, how FB monetizes its service does not fully
> define the potential of that service. The velocitized temporality of it is
> important, but again, I would argue, not defining. The consequences include
> the rise of what is now being called a post-truth culture (pretty much
> Baudrillard's precession of the simulacra, no?). But another facet of that
> is the weakening of foundationalisms and their dogma. I worry about overly
> moralizing these questions where the inevitable outcome is a foregone
> dystopia.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Nov 20, 2016, at 12:07 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Jerome, capitalism and war created the computer, not the Communist state
> or an agrarian utopia-- and a desire to penetrate a code. One should pay
> attention how things are created --one discovers a lot about their
> purposes. I talk about in in an earlier post. Isn't the same thing with
> Facebook, to peek into the private activities of a college girls dormitory.
> Isn't that original impulse written all over what Facebook has become
> despite all the "social media" goodies it offers --to penetrate the
> personal activities of one's essentially private, intimate lives, create
> data out of them and sell it. The primary impulse of Facebook --the raison
> d'etre of its flourishing personhood-- is to make the private public and
> social interactions short and infinite. In a very few years, it has
> created a Brave New World and we are all caught in it.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 11:48 AM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Murat, your comment brought another question to my mind, especially
>> because it alludes to the transformation of businesses. Working in the
>> corporate world for many years, I know that businesses found digital
>> technology irresistible because it was a tool that saved them lots of
>> money. It helped eliminate lots of jobs and made outsourcing, near
>> shore and far, much easier. As a result, it's hard for me to separate
>> the growt

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Jerome, yes, from one tip of the world to another, we are all caught in
this infernal machine. I and you and everyone. It is our present way of the
world. From the moment Turing imagined his machine, this was inevitable. It
is also he who invented the Turing test with the convincing argument that
human intelligence and artificial intelligence are the same, only one being
increasingly more powerful than the other. Ever since, we are in a search
of an elusive difference. That is what partly my poem *The Spiritual Life
of Replicants *(Talisman House, 2011) is all about.

To see a system in a clear-eyed way for exactly what it, *playing* with its
entrails, is the first step towards imagining an alternative. Otherwise, as
Jack Spicer said, it's like rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic.
That's why a poetry (art) of ideas (its giddy possibilities) is the first
step towards combating what we built. The computer age sprung (like all
mythical creatures) out of an idea. It will be undermined the same way.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 1:26 PM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>  At the same time, there's a critique of the dystopian vision: it
> discourages imagining alternatives. I know that, in the world of
> sci-fi, a writer like Kim Stanley Robinson makes it a point to provide
> utopian elements in his work, to make better futures a little more
> plausible (and therefore, worth working for). He came into the field
> at the time of TINA (Margaret Thatcher's slogan about Capitalism:
> "there is no alternative"). It often explores post-capitalist
> economies -- the technology in them being used to facilitate their
> workings. (I'm guessing his work is, in part, motivated by a desire to
> provide an alternative to the near dominance of dystopia as a mode of
> the sf of his moment.) Anyway, such writing would view technology, as
> Michael alluded to, as something that can harm or help. Murat, is your
> position that it's too late for that?
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> > Jerome, capitalism and war created the computer, not the Communist state
> or an agrarian utopia-- and a desire to penetrate a code. One should pay
> attention how things are created --one discovers a lot about their
> purposes. I talk about in in an earlier post. Isn't the same thing with
> Facebook, to peek into the private activities of a college girls dormitory.
> Isn't that original impulse written all over what Facebook has become
> despite all the "social media" goodies it offers --to penetrate the
> personal activities of one's essentially private, intimate lives, create
> data out of them and sell it. The primary impulse of Facebook --the raison
> d'etre of its flourishing personhood-- is to make the private public and
> social interactions short and infinite. In a very few years, it has
> created a Brave New World and we are all caught in it.
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Murat
> >
> > On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 11:48 AM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >> Murat, your comment brought another question to my mind, especially
> >> because it alludes to the transformation of businesses. Working in the
> >> corporate world for many years, I know that businesses found digital
> >> technology irresistible because it was a tool that saved them lots of
> >> money. It helped eliminate lots of jobs and made outsourcing, near
> >> shore and far, much easier. As a result, it's hard for me to separate
> >> the growth of this technology from the capitalism's desire to increase
> >> profits by cutting costs. So the question for me is -- is it
> >> technology per se that's the problem, or the way capitalism uses it?
> >>
> >> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 10:38 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >> > Michael, I do not agree with you. What makes it different is the
> incredible speed with which things are happening. There is no time to catch
> up and rebalance as in the old model. It is a bit like cancer or like a
> species through a mutation gaining a critical, basically irresistible
> advantage over its habitat. As a result all the other species begin to
> disappear and finally the habitat is destroyed, including the dominant
> species.
> >> >
> >> > Something like this is already happenin

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Jerome, capitalism and war created the computer, not the Communist state or
an agrarian utopia-- and a desire to penetrate a code. One should pay
attention how things are created --one discovers a lot about their
purposes. I talk about in in an earlier post. Isn't the same thing with
Facebook, to peek into the private activities of a college girls dormitory.
Isn't that original impulse written all over what Facebook has become
despite all the "social media" goodies it offers --to penetrate the
personal activities of one's essentially private, intimate lives, create
data out of them and sell it. The primary impulse of Facebook --the raison
d'etre of its flourishing personhood-- is to make the private public and
social interactions short and infinite. In a very few years, it has
created a Brave New World and we are all caught in it.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 11:48 AM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Murat, your comment brought another question to my mind, especially
> because it alludes to the transformation of businesses. Working in the
> corporate world for many years, I know that businesses found digital
> technology irresistible because it was a tool that saved them lots of
> money. It helped eliminate lots of jobs and made outsourcing, near
> shore and far, much easier. As a result, it's hard for me to separate
> the growth of this technology from the capitalism's desire to increase
> profits by cutting costs. So the question for me is -- is it
> technology per se that's the problem, or the way capitalism uses it?
>
> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 10:38 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> > Michael, I do not agree with you. What makes it different is the
> incredible speed with which things are happening. There is no time to catch
> up and rebalance as in the old model. It is a bit like cancer or like a
> species through a mutation gaining a critical, basically irresistible
> advantage over its habitat. As a result all the other species begin to
> disappear and finally the habitat is destroyed, including the dominant
> species.
> >
> > Something like this is already happening. Wealth is concentrated more
> and more on fewer and fewer people (and Trump, who ostensibly got elected
> to fight this trend, will intensify it through his tax cuts). One day,
> companies will have nobody to sell their goods to. That sounds far fetched.
> But it will happen, maybe sooner than we think. That is when the
> pandemonium will start. My guess is it will not be pretty.
> >
> > Take the idea of Uber for example, which is the cat's meow because of
> its convenience for people who used to take taxis and the bus. By one
> "disruption" enabled by the computer, they destroyed a whole ecology of
> businesses that owned local taxi fleets or individuals who owned their own
> taxis. They seduced taxi drivers by offering them better commissions. Who
> cares for a few taxi fleet owners! Everyone is happy. It took I think less
> than five years, now Uber is talking about driverless cars. I suppose those
> drivers can find jobs in the future as traffic cops for those Uber cars.
> One should not forget the owners of the taxi fleets may represent the
> "other," but the drivers are us.
> >
> > To be continued...
> >
> > Ciao,
> > Murat
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 6:33 AM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >> OK, devil's advocate here. Every tool humans have developed has changed
> them, has obliterated certain practices and modes of thinking and generated
> new ones. The computer is just another tool, a really sophisticated and
> complex hammer. Some of the consequences of this tool are pretty dire --
> the enablement of a post-truth polity, for instance -- but it also creates
> a potential being in common that is the  -- I want to say "cure" but that's
> not quite it. It's the antithetical action that opens into other
> possibilities. It can go either way, depending on what people do, and there
> are a lot of people doing a lot of different things.
> >>
> >> I don't think that our lack of awareness of our dependence on those
> systems is new. Isn't it always just "the world". And they (the techne)
> have always shaped us. Isn't that Heidegger's point? If you figure out how
> to make flint spear tips, you stop throwing rocks and become different. We
> become aware of it when t

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--What I mean is that science has built its own narrative of truth by which
it prevails which can also be a fiction.

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:28 AM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Sorry I don't understand your question.
>
> Skickat från min iPad
>
> > 19 nov. 2016 kl. 21:53 skrev Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com>:
> >
> > I am an old fan of science fiction and I am still in love with masters
> as Philip K Dick Sturgeon and Ursula Le Guin. They wrote about dystopian
> realities not far from ours. Sturgeon wrote about a gestalt a kind of
> complex unity composed by kids with extra sensorial abilities I don't want
> to call it "powers" to avoid any link to Marvels hyped heroes.
> > And Ursula Le Guin, an anarchist, challenged the whole idea of an
> antrhopomorfic God.
> > Science needs a narrative to prevail.
> > Ana
> >
> > Skickat från min iPad
> >
> >> 19 nov. 2016 kl. 21:34 skrev Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>:
> >>
> >> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >> "... "we're mostly unaware of how deeply our lives depend upon
> >> the functioning of complex, expert systems..." -- we're the fish in
> >> their ocean (McLuhan) (unless they break down). ..."
> >>
> >> That's why a digital art critiquing its own medium must involve, one
> >> way or another, a break down of its system. It must have an ethos of
> >> inefficiency or failure at its center-- not an expression of power,
> >> but weakness-- maybe an elusive glitch that the reader may experience
> >> subliminally or a software that decrease communication rather than
> >> improving it, etc., etc.
> >>
> >> "...I am not sure whether the "digital" can speak its truth (at least
> in a
> >> language we understand), but Shaviro suggests one way we humans might
> >> begin to see its truth/reality for ourselves - by creating art where
> >> the "material and technological factors are explicitly foregrounded"
> >>
> >> I do not agree with this part of the argument. Most often, this kind
> >> of work is celebratory, of "look what I'm doing, ma" kind  (I hope
> >> people will jump up and show the error of my way). It suggests that
> >> the technology is revealing something about us when in actually the
> >> work is mimicking, promoting the reality the technology is imposing.
> >>
> >> I think all great science fiction is dystopian. And I am a great fan
> >> and believer in it as a modern relevant form of expression. My
> >> previous poem The Spiritual Life of Replicants is actually a science
> >> fiction work. At this moment, Peter Valente's reference to Melies's
> >> silent masterpiece A Voyage to the Moon comes to my mind. On first go,
> >> it seems to be a science fiction work that is celebrating the future.
> >> So far so good... But the film is so full of domestic details and the
> >> space ship the "space men" are traveling on is so ramshackle that one
> >> gradually realizes that the people are transporting their bourgeois,
> >> middle class life to the moon, that the movie is a magical, exquisite
> >> piece of satire.
> >>
> >> Ciao,
> >> Murat
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> >>> Murat, your question, as to whether "the computer (and the web and its
> >>> consequence) has the ability to expose and criticize the condition it
> >>> has created...whether the digital can be 'revealer of is own truth',
> >>> brought to mind a book I've been reading - Discognition, by Steven
> >>> Shaviro. One of the points Shaviro argues is that, in our everyday
> >>> experience, "we're mostly unaware of how deeply our lives depend upon
> >>> the functioning of complex, expert systems..." -- we're the fish in
> >>> their ocean (McLuhan) (unless they break down). Another aspect we
> >>> don't grasp, as your question implies, is that such technological
> >>> entities, rather then just being there, inert until we manipulate
> >>> them, have an agency of their own: "...if we engineer them, in various
> >>> ways, they 'engineer' us as well, nudging us

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
"... "we're mostly unaware of how deeply our lives depend upon
the functioning of complex, expert systems..." -- we're the fish in
their ocean (McLuhan) (unless they break down). ..."

That's why a digital art critiquing its own medium must involve, one
way or another, a break down of its system. It must have an ethos of
inefficiency or failure at its center-- not an expression of power,
but weakness-- maybe an elusive glitch that the reader may experience
subliminally or a software that decrease communication rather than
improving it, etc., etc.

"...I am not sure whether the "digital" can speak its truth (at least in a
language we understand), but Shaviro suggests one way we humans might
begin to see its truth/reality for ourselves - by creating art where
the "material and technological factors are explicitly foregrounded"

I do not agree with this part of the argument. Most often, this kind
of work is celebratory, of "look what I'm doing, ma" kind  (I hope
people will jump up and show the error of my way). It suggests that
the technology is revealing something about us when in actually the
work is mimicking, promoting the reality the technology is imposing.

I think all great science fiction is dystopian. And I am a great fan
and believer in it as a modern relevant form of expression. My
previous poem The Spiritual Life of Replicants is actually a science
fiction work. At this moment, Peter Valente's reference to Melies's
silent masterpiece A Voyage to the Moon comes to my mind. On first go,
it seems to be a science fiction work that is celebrating the future.
So far so good... But the film is so full of domestic details and the
space ship the "space men" are traveling on is so ramshackle that one
gradually realizes that the people are transporting their bourgeois,
middle class life to the moon, that the movie is a magical, exquisite
piece of satire.

Ciao,
Murat


On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 5:54 PM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com> wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Murat, your question, as to whether "the computer (and the web and its
> consequence) has the ability to expose and criticize the condition it
> has created...whether the digital can be 'revealer of is own truth',
> brought to mind a book I've been reading - Discognition, by Steven
> Shaviro. One of the points Shaviro argues is that, in our everyday
> experience, "we're mostly unaware of how deeply our lives depend upon
> the functioning of complex, expert systems..." -- we're the fish in
> their ocean (McLuhan) (unless they break down). Another aspect we
> don't grasp, as your question implies, is that such technological
> entities, rather then just being there, inert until we manipulate
> them, have an agency of their own: "...if we engineer them, in various
> ways, they 'engineer' us as well, nudging us to adapt to their
> demands."
>
> I am not sure whether the "digital" can speak its truth (at least in a
> language we understand), but Shaviro suggests one way we humans might
> begin to see its truth/reality for ourselves - by creating art where
> the "material and technological factors are explicitly foregrounded."
> His book is about science fiction stories that do this. Perhaps this
> is also what I had in mind by the poetic project I wrote about, which
> foregrounds digital/corporate cliches that inform us, through the
> jargon we speak. In any case, Shaviro's book may offer a clue as to
> the great popularity of the SF genre. Often, in allegorical ways, it
> acknowledges the agency of the technological (remember the Borg?), and
> enables people to start talking about the power of its influence.
>
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 3:15 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Jerome, by your question on the nature of "knowing" in poetry, I
>> think you touched a critical point, an issue running throughout the
>> discussions and presentations this month.
>>
>> Knowledge that poetic experience contains or "reveals" does have
>> multiple facets. On the one hand, the knowledge (in some incarnations,
>> message/propaganda) may be transactional and implicitly points or
>> leads to action. Some great classics are of that sort, for instance,
>> Lucretius's On Nature or Virgil's Eclogues, Shakespeare's Henry V and
>> also, in some sense, though a book of "revelation," The Bible, etc.
>> The election of Trump last week drove the discussion to the
>> transactional side of poetry (art), and rightly so. That is what all
>> the writing invited to be sent to Dispatc

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Hi Jerome, by your question on the nature of "knowing" in poetry, I
think you touched a critical point, an issue running throughout the
discussions and presentations this month.

Knowledge that poetic experience contains or "reveals" does have
multiple facets. On the one hand, the knowledge (in some incarnations,
message/propaganda) may be transactional and implicitly points or
leads to action. Some great classics are of that sort, for instance,
Lucretius's On Nature or Virgil's Eclogues, Shakespeare's Henry V and
also, in some sense, though a book of "revelation," The Bible, etc.
The election of Trump last week drove the discussion to the
transactional side of poetry (art), and rightly so. That is what all
the writing invited to be sent to Dispatches for the anthology all
about. So are the post cards Craig refers to, as conceptual acts.

There is another kind of knowledge that poetry "reveals," not
necessarily leading to action-- of course, the distinction is somewhat
artificial since a poem or work of art contains both simultaneously
each time creating a different balance. If one extreme side of this
spectrum is propaganda (all nations/cultures/languages have propaganda
masterpieces), the other extreme is gnosis-- a knowledge not quite
contained in the practicalities of a language, but in its peripheries,
the often unacknowledged overtones that emanate from words, space,
etc. (embedded in poesies).

It is in terms of this same dilemma (the nature of poetic knowledge)
that Heidegger is discussing technology in his essay. On the one hand
it is defined as "enframing" nature to exploit it (in terms that
Francis Bacon asserts as "knowledge is power"). On the other hand, it
returns technology to its roots as techne, a making that reveals the
truth. Their relationship is dialectical.

I have been on Empyre list for about two years, following it on and
off with interest because it presents to me a digital culture that is
of great interest to me; but in which I am not directly involved as a
practitioner. What struck me most is that, save for important
exceptions such as Alan Sondheim and Isak Berbic (and I am sure there
are others), the focus of the participants was on what the internet or
the computer can do for them, on the computer as a new potent enabler,
the computer as artistic or political power. As far as I can see,
little attention was given to it as a revealer of "truth," the
knowledge of human condition and psyche in a digital technological
age.

In my view, poetry (art) is doomed to die without containing within
itself both these knowledge, though the melange may be different in
each.

The underlying focus for me this month has been, that is why I
accepted the invitation to moderate, to explore whether the computer
(and the web as its consequence) has the ability to expose and
criticize the condition it has created, in other words, whether the
digital can be the "revealer of its own truth." I can not say I have
been that successful up to now.

The primary text for this month is the fifteen minute video clip I
referred to in my introductory statement at the beginning of the month
in which the film maker Jean Renoir discusses the effect of technology
on art (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7Mtd6GE_PI ). He says that
art becomes boring to the extent that that the art maker is in total
control of his or her own materials and techniques. He refers to a
group of 11th century French tapestries (the Bayeux, the first known
ones) where the threads were coarsely spun, the colors were primitive
and of a narrow range; but they contained great beauty, revealing the
strife of their making.

That is why "Overcoming Technique"--the first two words of my
introductory title-- is crucial, whether one finally agrees with
Renoir or not. In our daily lives with family and children and
teaching and grading papers, etc., I hope some of us find time to
re-focus on these issues the remaining days of this month. As artists,
the issues are important for all of us.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Craig Saper  wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Relevant to the discussion and the “dispatches” this event might speak to the 
> issue of, what Jerome Sala called in a recent "poetry is a particular way of 
> knowing the mind” …
>
>
> "Post Card Avalanche"
>
> Join in and send a postcard directly to Trump! Here are the basic 
> instructions to participate:
>
> ** IMPORTANT - Don't mail your card until NOV. 26th **
>
> In the message section, write this simple message: NOT BANNON!
>
> Throw a post card Avalanche party. Make postcards.
>
> Address it as follows:
>
> Donald Trump
> c/o The Trump Organization
> 725 Fifth Avenue
> New York, NY 10022
>
> Affix a stamp - you can use a 35 cent postcard stamp, or a normal letter 
> stamp.
>
> Take a picture of your postcard that you can share on social media using the 
> 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--(G)no)ledge of what is/and is not embodied in language.

Ciao,
Murat

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 1:21 PM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@rogers.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Jerome -- I am not sure what you mean by counter-culture sounding board. I
> meant that the poetics of the New American Poetry -- as varied as they were
> -- mostly agreed that the poem is [an] opening into forms of knowing
> specific to the potential of language events it embodies. It is not about
> "expressing feelings". It is not perfectly composed out of various
> predictable tropes. It is not a statement about what you already know. It's
> a venture and as a venture it opens into a transformative gnosis of the
> deep unfolding dimensionality of the world. Charles Olson called it
> projective. I won't rehearse all the arguments and misrepresentations of
> that, only to say that Olson's projective resonates with what the
> philosopher/scientist Karen Barad calls (re)configurations of entangled
> emergence.
>
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 11:57 AM, Jerome Sala <jeromesala...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Michael,
>> I was intrigued in your statement by what you described as a
>> "commitment to poetry as a particular mode of knowledge" connected to
>> the writing in the Donald Allen anthology. Could you elaborate on this
>> a bit? Were you thinking of poetry in its function as a
>> counter-cultural sounding board? I ask because lately (and this is
>> probably in a different sense than what you were thinking), when I
>> read philosophy/science about the whole area consciousness/cognitive
>> studies, I sometimes think poetry is a particular way of knowing the
>> mind.
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 10:39 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> > "...
>> > n the last week, beginning with an announcement at Dispatches that went
>> out to 200 poets and was picked up and reposted to many more, we responded
>> to the Trump disaster with a call for contributions to an anthology of
>> poetry of resistance to the new fascist movement. Within three days, we
>> were inundated with positive responses. Using the speed of the internet,
>> the editorial group has now expanded to a broad and diverse group of 10
>> poets, each of whom has reached out to 10-20 of their friends. The book now
>> has 200+ contributors lined up. We hope to publish it as an INITIAL act of
>> resistance shortly after Trump’s inauguration. It is the sudden
>> crystallization of a latent being-in-common that this tool, this medium,
>> makes possible. We don’t need a central committee because we have the
>> internet.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > That immediacy energizes the being-in-common in ways that intensify the
>> resistance to the Administration’s professionalized death formations (see,
>> for instance, The Poetry Foundation website, or The Great Philadelphia
>> Poetry Warehouse and Media Centre), and creates opportunities for further
>> proliferation of relation beyond the immediate, not only within the virtual
>> space, but beyond it in the creation of formations in the rough and tumble
>> world. The anthology then will become a kind of decentered centre which
>> will provoke occasions for coming together in the world. At a time when the
>> Trump Doom looms before us in its authoritarian darkness, such small
>> centres of life and thinking are what we have to hold on to to keep the
>> light alive and extend the resistance in more and more networks of
>> being-in-common." (from Michael Boghn's Introductory Statement as a guest
>> contributor in November)
>> >
>> > I would like to present this announcement for the anthology that
>> Michael is talking about -- an example of words turning into act even
>> though the act itself in words may be:
>> >
>> > "
>> >
>> > Spuyten Duyvil Press
>> >
>> > and
>> >
>> > Dispatches Editions
>> >
>> > announce the publication of
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Resist Much / Obey Little
>> >
>> > Inaugural Poems to the Resistance
>> >
>> > “To The States, or any one of them, or any city of The States, Resist
>> much, obey little;
>> >
>> > Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved;
>> >
>> > Once fully enslav

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Renate, I have been using Firefox and gmail. I still had all these
problems.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 11:42 PM, Michael Boughn  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Alan -- I don't think it is closed. I have no idea how this thing works
> and have had a very difficult time getting my statement posted.
>
> What would you like me to do? Post it again?
>
> Mike
>
> On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 5:03 PM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>>
>> Hi Michael,
>>
>> I didn't receive anything about submitting; is it possible to send this
>> out again or is it already closed? I think there are a lot of people on
>> this list who would be interested.
>>
>> Thanks, Alan
>>
>> (Footnote - does anyone know why it's impossible to quote from a message
>> sent out? are people using attachments? is there an issue with the
>> software? I'm looking forward to a lively discussion, but technicalities
>> seem to get in the way - for example, I just read a post from Murat, but it
>> disappears when I try to quote parts of it. Thanks -)
>>
>>
>> ==
>> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
>> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
>> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/uh.txt
>> ==
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
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Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

and creates
> opportunities for further proliferations of relation beyond the immediate,
> not only within the virtual space, but beyond it in the proliferating
> creation of formations in the rough and tumble  world. At a time when the
> Trump Doom looms over us in its authoritarian darkness, such small centres
> of life and thinking are what we have to hold on to to keep the light alive
> and extend the resistance in networks of being-in-common.
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Nov 16, 2016, at 1:54 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Michael, can you send your statement as a response to this e-mail thread?
>
> Murat
>
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 10:06 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> In his 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heiddeger
>> says the following:
>> "The question concerning technology is the question concerning the
>> constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to
>> presence of truth, comes to pass.
>>
>> But what help is it to us to looking into constellation? We look into the
>> danger and see the growth of the saving power.
>>
>> … How can this happen? Here and now and in little things that we may
>> foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always
>> before our eyes the extreme danger…
>>
>> There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name
>> techie…. Once there was a time when the bringing forth of the true into the
>> beautiful was called techie. And the poiesis of the fine arts also was
>> called techne…."
>>
>> The "extreme danger" Heiddeger is talking about now is President Trump.
>> He is the master "techie" of words and weaver of lies -- basically an
>> artist of evil spirit, of bad faith singing a siren song to the dejected
>> and hating.
>>
>> The guest contributors this week, Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala, are
>> poets. Sala works inside the entrails of the corporate structure as data
>> analyst and writes his poetry from there. Boghn, along with Kent Johnson,
>> is the co-founder of the poetry blog Dispatches where, in the great
>> anarchist Hakim Bey's (Peter Lamborn Wilson's) words, they want to create
>> an "autonomous zone," a "pirate utopia" of poets within the structure of
>> the internet. Dispatches has organized the first concrete reaction of
>> "poises" in the United States to Trump's election. They are preparing an
>> anthology  that will have I think over 200 poet's/artists' reactions to the
>> election. It will be published the day of Trump's inauguration.
>>
>> From this point on, I will let Michael and Jerome speak for themselves.
>>
>> I invite most devoutly every member on the list to contribute to the
>> discussions,
>>
>> Ciao,
>> Murat
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Jonathan, your post came to me for approval in a jumble. Because it was
come from what appeared to be a legitimate addressed, I approved it
nevertheless. It appeared in the post in readable shape. Go figure. With
are dealing with a system that seems to suffer from digital arrhythmia.

Ciao,
Murat

On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 5:05 PM, Jonathan Marshall <
jonathan.marsh...@uts.edu.au> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> For what its worth, I hardly ever respond to Empyre discussions because
> about half of the messages come through as attachments - which means I
> continually lose the content and context of discussions... I don't seem to
> be able to do anything about it.
>
> jon
> 
> From: empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au  artdesign.unsw.edu.au> on behalf of Alan Sondheim 
> Sent: Thursday, 17 November 2016 9:03 AM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome
> Sala
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
> Hi Michael,
>
> I didn't receive anything about submitting; is it possible to send this
> out again or is it already closed? I think there are a lot of people on
> this list who would be interested.
>
> Thanks, Alan
>
> (Footnote - does anyone know why it's impossible to quote from a message
> sent out? are people using attachments? is there an issue with the
> software? I'm looking forward to a lively discussion, but technicalities
> seem to get in the way - for example, I just read a post from Murat, but
> it disappears when I try to quote parts of it. Thanks -)
>
>
> ==
> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/uh.txt
> ==
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
> UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
> DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may
> contain confidential information.
> If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate,
> distribute or copy this message or
> attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the
> sender immediately and delete
> this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the
> individual sender, except where the
> sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the
> University of Technology Sydney.
> Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.
>
> Think. Green. Do.
>
> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
> ___
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> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Alan, I don't know whether Alan is receiving your post. So I am posting his
introductory statement in his place. I hope people respond to it. (Murat:

"I apologize for the delay in posting this, but I have had a lot of trouble
figuring out the system.

I am probably older than most people in this group. I first came to
computers when I was in my early 40’s and in grad school in Buffalo. I had
spent years working in various industrial situations, much of the time
organizing for what I later came to see as a communist cult but which at
the time was the vehicle for my passion about justice. The computer was a
Kapro and it belonged to the guys who lived downstairs from my friend,
Peter. You had to build those computers from scratch and they looked like
the grown up spawn of an Erector Set. I thought the hype was way overblown,
especially watching one of the guys play slo-mo pong, the lurid green dot
slowly moving back and forth between two moving lines on the black screen.



But then they started talking about MIT and about *going there* to *talk
with* some people and get some software. Going there? Talking? It was my
first glimpse of the possibility of a new mode of relation, of coming
together in intangible spaces for the purpose of talking and of being in
common. It wasn’t *very* common then outside small circles of computer
pioneers and pirates. But soon there were Compuserve chat rooms. And then
there was Facebook.



I can’t say *Facebook *without feeling physically my deep ambivalence. It’s
an enormous echo chamber where your friends endlessly broadcast their
political preferences to other people just like them, as if it mattered, as
if repeating their brand preference over and over was going to make a
difference. Meanwhile they sit at their desks in front of a screen counting
their likes. But I have also had some amazingly complex and important
exchanges on Facebook, exchanges that led to further engagements in, as
they say, the flesh. I have met people I would never have met otherwise,
and renewed old relationships that otherwise would have been lost forever.
So as much as the virtual community on Facebook is a narcissistic
echo-chamber, it is simultaneously a place of actual relation, of being in
common that has enriched my life.



I was thinking about that being in common when, together with Kent Johnson,
I launched the web site Dispatches from the Poetry Wars in April of this
year. Kent and I share a commitment to poetry as a particular mode of
knowledge connected to the writing Donald Allen brought together in *The
New American Poetry *in 1960. That relation to poetry has largely been lost
to a poetry “market” that arose within the neo-liberal counter-revolution
of the 1980s and 1990s. Poetry became divided between various careerist and
professionalizing tendencies that have dominated its writing and
distribution in the years since. The consolidation of a professional
avant-garde on the one hand (the “left” hand), and the rise of the
corporate funded and operated Poetry Foundation on the other (“right”
hand), dispersed and dispirited many ordinary communities of poets that had
been empowered in the years after Allen’s anthology was published.



Dispatches from the Poetry Wars was imagined as a popular, anarchist
counter punch to those two Offices of the Administration. Aside from the
satirical critique of the MFA/Creative Writing axis and the Professional
Avant-Garde axis, Dispatches is a kind of virtual pirate utopia or
temporary autonomous zone within which a previously unknown or lost
being-in-common is coming together, making itself known to itself. In the
past this would have been done in print publications like Ed Sanders’ *Fuck
You: A Magazine of the Arts*, John Clarke’s *intent.: a newsletter of talk,
thinking, and document*, Ken Warren’s *House Organ*, The Institute of
Further Study’s *The Magazine of Further Studies*, or numerous other under
the radar publications. The difference is that the space/medium that the
computer offers allows for almost instantaneous connection and
communication. Rather than waiting 3 or 4 months for the next magazine to
appear in your mailbox, the conversation goes on continually in its
immediate finitude. Actual arguments take place in nearly real time. Errors
are addressed and dealt with. It is immediately responsive.



In the last week, beginning with an announcement at Dispatches that went
out to 200 poets and was picked up and reposted to many more, we responded
to the Trump disaster with a call for contributions to an anthology of
poetry of resistance to the new fascist movement. Within three days, we
were inundated with positive responses. Using the speed of the internet,
the editorial group has now expanded to a broad and diverse group of 10
poets, each of whom has reached out to 10-20 of their friends. The book now
has 200+ contributors lined up. We hope to publish it as an INITIAL act of

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Michael, can you send your statement as a response to this e-mail thread?

Murat

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 10:06 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> In his 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heiddeger
> says the following:
> "The question concerning technology is the question concerning the
> constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to
> presence of truth, comes to pass.
>
> But what help is it to us to looking into constellation? We look into the
> danger and see the growth of the saving power.
>
> … How can this happen? Here and now and in little things that we may
> foster the saving power in its increase. This includes holding always
> before our eyes the extreme danger…
>
> There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name
> techie…. Once there was a time when the bringing forth of the true into the
> beautiful was called techie. And the poiesis of the fine arts also was
> called techne…."
>
> The "extreme danger" Heiddeger is talking about now is President Trump. He
> is the master "techie" of words and weaver of lies -- basically an artist
> of evil spirit, of bad faith singing a siren song to the dejected and
> hating.
>
> The guest contributors this week, Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala, are
> poets. Sala works inside the entrails of the corporate structure as data
> analyst and writes his poetry from there. Boghn, along with Kent Johnson,
> is the co-founder of the poetry blog Dispatches where, in the great
> anarchist Hakim Bey's (Peter Lamborn Wilson's) words, they want to create
> an "autonomous zone," a "pirate utopia" of poets within the structure of
> the internet. Dispatches has organized the first concrete reaction of
> "poises" in the United States to Trump's election. They are preparing an
> anthology  that will have I think over 200 poet's/artists' reactions to the
> election. It will be published the day of Trump's inauguration.
>
> From this point on, I will let Michael and Jerome speak for themselves.
>
> I invite most devoutly every member on the list to contribute to the
> discussions,
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

[-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
n his 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heiddeger says 
the following: 
"The question concerning technology is the question concerning the 
constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to 
presence of truth, comes to pass.

But what help is it to us to looking into constellation? We look into the 
danger and see the growth of the saving power.

… How can this happen? Here and now and in little things that we may foster the 
saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the 
extreme danger…

There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techie…. 
Once there was a time when the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful 
was called techie. And the poiesis of the fine arts also was called techne…."

The "extreme danger" Heiddeger is talking about now is President Trump. He is 
the master "techie" of words and weaver of lies -- basically an artist of evil 
spirit, of bad faith singing a siren song to the dejected and hating.

The guest contributors this week, Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala, are poets. 
Sala works inside the entrails of the corporate structure as data analyst and 
writes his poetry from there. Boghn, along with Kent Johnson, is the co-founder 
of the poetry blog Dispatches where, in the great anarchist Hakim Bey's (Peter 
Lamborn Wilson's) words, they want to create an "autonomous zone," a "pirate 
utopia" of poets within the structure of the internet. Dispatches has organized 
the first concrete reaction of "poises" in the United States to Trump's 
election. They are preparing an anthology  that will have I think over 200 
poet's/artists' reactions to the election. It will be published the day of 
Trump's inauguration.

>From this point on, I will let Michael and Jerome speak for themselves.

I invite most devoutly every member on the list to contribute to the 
discussions,

Ciao,
Murat
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
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Re: [-empyre-] Tr[-empyre]

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Yes Maria, he is in my opinion an amzing artist and writer. Have you read
his "Lieutenant" pieces. Absolutely amazing. We did a collaboration
together on Bushes "surge" in Irak (interestingly the same title as Alan's
"surge"). Chirot also write very nice things about my work, including an
very insightful review of my essay/book *The Peripheral Space of
Photography*.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 10:52 AM, Maria Damon <damon...@umn.edu> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Oh I adore the work of David-Baptiste Chirot! We used one of his RubBeings
> as the cover for Poetry and Cultural Studies: A Reader.
>
> On 11/15/16 10:29 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
>
> Of course, Ana is one of these persons on Empyre list, and I assume there
> are others.
>
> Here, I would like to evoke the name of another amazing thinker, writer,
> collagist who lives in Milwaukee and unfortunate can not be part of these
> discussion. He is David Chirot. His collection of discarded objects in the
> streets of Milwaukee, basically junk, to make his art is very similar to
> the process. From what I understand, he was under constant surveillance
> while he lived in Europe.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Craig Saper <csa...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> Following the discussion closely. And, the tech-nic-al bre-ak dow- on the
>> listserve.
>>
>> One thread I hope continues in new week — w/ new moderators and
>> participants — the role of e-x-arts in -empyre —in a time when many are
>> confronting Exile, Escape, …
>>
>> Here is something I shared with Alan Sondheim as a sidebar (off the list)
>> using the sound track (by Azure Carter, voice and song Luke Damrosch,
>> programming, recording, engineering and Sondheim on flute … [their CD
>> will be released with Public Eyesore]. …  as the soundtrack for this
>> excerpt):
>>
>> non-fiction allegory and escape manual :: both literally and figuratively
>>
>>
>> An excerpt from my book [play the soundtrack that Sondheim posted:
>> http://www.alansondheim.org/protoborrow.mp3]:
>>
>>
>>
>> In literary histories of modernism, the word expatriate has, until
>> recently, referred to a group of American writers and artists living in
>> Paris and the Côte d’ Azur in the 1920s. Ernest Hemingway immortalized this
>> supposedly high-living crowd in his novel A Moveable Feast (1964), as did
>> Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but counter to the mistaken view of
>> a decadent and politically detached expatriate group, many of these same
>> expatriates, including Rose and Bob Brown, began by fleeing, penniless,
>> through Mexico and into Latin America in 1917 (often to avoid jail for
>> sedition or draft dodging). In their actions, they broadened the definition
>> of expatriates and stressed the literary and artistic
>> vanguardists?connections to loss, exile, violence, and narrow escapes.
>> These were not just themes in later avant-garde art; these were the lived
>> experience of a generation, where a poverty-induced make-do resourcefulness
>> reinforced collages of found, often discarded, objects; where exile led to
>> a fascination with otherness and displacement; where their disgust with the
>> xenophobia sweeping the United States and Europe, in the late teens and
>> early 1920s, led to their flaunting diversity, difference,
>> internationalism, and otherness; and where the necessity to avoid arrest
>> fueled an interest in masquerade, coded allusions, and inside jokes. (from
>> Chapter 4: Exile, Escape, and World Travels)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre 
> forumemp...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.auhttp://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
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Re: [-empyre-] under the gun

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--As far as I am concerned, no one should be inhibited by the division f
weeks, as "yours" or "my" week. Anyone can pick up or refer to a thread
that started previous weeks.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Hi Dirk,
>
> Our week is up, as far as I know; other contributors won't be disrupted by
> an election at least.
>
> - Alan
>
>
>
> On Tue, 15 Nov 2016, Dirk Vekemans wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>
> ==
> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
> ==
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Tr[-empyre]

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Of course, Ana is one of these persons on Empyre list, and I assume there
are others.

Here, I would like to evoke the name of another amazing thinker, writer,
collagist who lives in Milwaukee and unfortunate can not be part of these
discussion. He is David Chirot. His collection of discarded objects in the
streets of Milwaukee, basically junk, to make his art is very similar to
the process. From what I understand, he was under constant surveillance
while he lived in Europe.

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Craig Saper  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Following the discussion closely. And, the tech-nic-al bre-ak dow- on the
> listserve.
>
> One thread I hope continues in new week — w/ new moderators and
> participants — the role of e-x-arts in -empyre —in a time when many are
> confronting Exile, Escape, …
>
> Here is something I shared with Alan Sondheim as a sidebar (off the list)
> using the sound track (by Azure Carter, voice and song Luke Damrosch,
> programming, recording, engineering and Sondheim on flute … [their CD
> will be released with Public Eyesore]. …  as the soundtrack for this
> excerpt):
>
> non-fiction allegory and escape manual :: both literally and figuratively
>
>
> An excerpt from my book [play the soundtrack that Sondheim posted:
> http://www.alansondheim.org/protoborrow.mp3]:
>
>
>
> In literary histories of modernism, the word expatriate has, until
> recently, referred to a group of American writers and artists living in
> Paris and the Côte d’ Azur in the 1920s. Ernest Hemingway immortalized this
> supposedly high-living crowd in his novel A Moveable Feast (1964), as did
> Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but counter to the mistaken view of
> a decadent and politically detached expatriate group, many of these same
> expatriates, including Rose and Bob Brown, began by fleeing, penniless,
> through Mexico and into Latin America in 1917 (often to avoid jail for
> sedition or draft dodging). In their actions, they broadened the definition
> of expatriates and stressed the literary and artistic
> vanguardists?connections to loss, exile, violence, and narrow escapes.
> These were not just themes in later avant-garde art; these were the lived
> experience of a generation, where a poverty-induced make-do resourcefulness
> reinforced collages of found, often discarded, objects; where exile led to
> a fascination with otherness and displacement; where their disgust with the
> xenophobia sweeping the United States and Europe, in the late teens and
> early 1920s, led to their flaunting diversity, difference,
> internationalism, and otherness; and where the necessity to avoid arrest
> fueled an interest in masquerade, coded allusions, and inside jokes. (from
> Chapter 4: Exile, Escape, and World Travels)
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

[-empyre-] Starting the Third Week: Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
In his 1954 essay "The Question Concerning Technology," Martin Heiddeger says 
the following: 
"The question concerning technology is the question concerning the 
constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to 
presence of truth, comes to pass.

But what help is it to us to looking into constellation? We look into the 
danger and see the growth of the saving power.

… How can this happen? Here and now and in little things that we may foster the 
saving power in its increase. This includes holding always before our eyes the 
extreme danger…

There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techie…. 
Once there was a time when the bringing forth of the true into the beautiful 
was called techie. And the poiesis of the fine arts also was called techne…."

The "extreme danger" Heiddeger is talking about now is President Trump. He is 
the master "techie" of words and weaver of lies -- basically an artist of evil 
spirit, of bad faith singing a siren song to the dejected and hating.

The guest contributors this week, Michael Boghn and Jerome Sala, are poets. 
Sala works inside the entrails of the corporate structure as data analyst and 
writes his poetry from there. Boghn, along with Kent Johnson, is the co-founder 
of the poetry blog Dispatches where, in the great anarchist Hakim Bey's (Peter 
Lamborn Wilson's) words, they want to create an "autonomous zone," a "pirate 
utopia" of poets within the structure of the internet. Dispatches has organized 
the first concrete reaction of "poises" in the United States to Trump's 
election. They are preparing an anthology  that will have I think over 200 
poet's/artists' reactions to the election. It will be published the day of 
Trump's inauguration.

>From this point on, I will let Michael and Jerome speak for themselves.

I invite most devoutly every member on the list to contribute to the 
discussions,

Ciao,
Murat
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] under the gun

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Dear Ana, the horrors you are anticipating in Europe and the States, many
of them are unfortunately true.

I just want to pick just on Sarandon's comments which I think you are
quoting admiringly. I think she is the exhibit 1 for the narcissistic self
satisfaction and self-righteousness that a strain in the left in the United
States represents. Sarandon voted for Stein, the Green candidate. One of
the first things Trump and his party will do is open the entirety of the
United States for oil exploration, get out of the climate change agreement
this country achieved with China and the majority of the other countries in
the world and abolish all the executive order Obama signed for climate
control. I am sure Sarandon feels very pure and smart ("I don't vote with
my vagina," the vagina reference again in relation to this election). To
me, she is ridiculous. Perhaps, who knowd, she voted for the high quality
of Stein's songs and band.

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 11:25 PM, Ana Valdés  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Friends as a one -empyre old timer and an old time activist, jailed for
> several years, waterboarded and a lot of etc, exiled in Sweden for more
> than 30 years now back in South America I dare to add my voice to this
> collective lamentation.
> The election in the US was an election between Schila and Caribdis.
> Hillary Clinton played for many years in the powers inner territorium and
> she became flawed or tainted.  Her support to the war in Irak and her
> support to Israel hawks made her a very impopular candidate among leftist
> or radical thinkers.
> Women didn't vote for her "per se", Susan Sarandon who voted for Jill
> Stein, told a reporter "I don't vote with my vagina". Many saw not in
> Clinton a champion of radical feminism.
> But in comparison with Trump ' blatant antisemitism bigotteri and lies she
> become mother Teresa.
> Now we, the world, must cope with four years of backlash and xenophobic
> rethoric.
> We got six former Guantanamo prisoners to Uruguay they spent 13 years in
> jail without trial. They were vaguely accused of belonging to al Qaeda or
> to be Osama bin Laden drivers or other more or less ungrounded accusations.
> One of them, Ahmed, is now a friend to me. He was at my home today and
> tried unsuccessfully to reach his family living in the living hell of
> Aleppo.
> Trump has said he and Putin are going to go together against Isis and it
> means supporting and keeping Assad in power.
> It means all those millions killed and displaced in Siria sacrificed
> themselves for nothing, Assads goes out from this war stronger than ever.
> And in Europe it's a lot worse my Swedish friends are in dismay.  Trump
> promised Putin to accept officially Russians annexation of Crimea and Trump
> answered to the question of a journalist "I am not ready to take the US to
> a war for some suburbs to St Petersburg".
> (He was speaking about Ucrania Letland Estonia and Lithuania of course).
> If we are not able to make a world coalition against Trump and Putin we
> are going to see a new world order scarier than that we had before.
> Sorry for my long rant!
> Ana
>
> Den 14 nov 2016 00:33 skrev "AAR" :
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> I’ve dipped in & out of this thread. Yes, there’s a lot of hysteria going
> around for very good reasons. A video by Van Jones has been circulating in
> which he basically advises people to step back and reinforce our personal
> base- with love, happy routines, etc, even as we search for the ways
> forward. He thinks there are some opportunities. I don’t know. T. is moving
> swiftly to install people and initiatives that could rapidly lead to
> planetary ruin for most of us. It’s hard to stay focused. Personally, I
> find that besides my rage, owning my grief helps a lot. i stay on FB
> threads with smart people I admire. I keep working. As a Jewish person, I
> am weighed down by millenia of PTSD. I am trying to see past my own horror
> and terror to everyone else’s. I have my walls up against white Christian
> male complacency and misogyny. But hey, there are tons of female
> male-identified misogynists out there as well. The news screams about happy
> white supremacists spawning a whole new generation of Nazis, and every hour
> it seems I hear about another hate crime. Artists and intellectuals did not
> do well in the Third Reich. I think we will all be walking targets for the
> disaffected, but more to be revealed. The RNC of the USA pulled a fast one
> in slow motion in this country, with voter suppression and gerrymandering,
> whipping up false fears, controlling the media, making unholy coalitions
> with hypocritical evangelicals, Putin and our very own FBI so fossil fuels
> can destroy the earth asap. So many will be collateral damage. So many
> already have been. 

Re: [-empyre-] your language games

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--GRAB EM BY THE PUISSANCE


Last Friday our guest participant this week Adeena Karasick had sent what I
thought was a very interesting post to the list with the title "GRAB EM BY
THE PUISSANCE" describing her reactions to the election One of the members
of the list reacted to it in total outrage (I don't remember the person's
name at the moment). Since then Adeena neither received any of the Empyre
posts nor, as far as she can tell, her posts appeared on the list. She is
very disappointed. She is an amazing artist, and I am sorry that we are
deprived of her input. She is absolutely convinced that she is banished
from the list though her posts are in the Empyre archives. Ironically, for
some reason, she is not permitted to enter the archives and see. I tried to
solve the problem to no avail.


Here I am posting both Adeena's post, the one that caused such a heart burn
to one of the members, and also Adeena's response. I think they are worth
being included here:



"

GRAB EM BY THE PUISSANCE


All through the nightmarish disbelief and utter delirium of yesterday, I
kept wanting to post something here, but it felt frivolous, indulgent to be
thinking about language games; about the celebration of multiplicity given
the very real effects of the duplicity that we find all around us.But,
in the apocalyptic aftermath of yesterday, I am awake. And I keep thinking
about how language is entwined with being; (whether for Wittgenstein, Sapir
Whorf or Kabbalah for that matter), language is inseparable from
perception, cognition, behavior. And its very renegade multiplicitous
excess, (evident in Alan’s “splatter texts” or Murat’s interventions, our
multiple readings), it’s this very Sprachspiel that will save us…it’s
precisely through our attention to these “games” that transformation and
change happen.If rules of language are analogous to the rules of games;
ie if saying something in language is analogous to making a move in a game,
(each with its own codes, grammar, relations, contexts), and though we
never fully know the rules of the game, we are always learning,
internalizing, and becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, global
algorithm, discovering is ALLEGO’RHYTHMS; simultaneously learning and
unlearning the systems, the codes.   And I think this is something that
binds all 3 of us, Alan and Murat – especially here I’m thinking of your
fantastic essay at the end of "Hamlet and Its Hidden Texts: Poems as
Commentary in Murat’s new Animals of Dawn (which was an amazing pleasure to
read).  The idea that not just that the rules are infinitely changing but
that you have to go inside the game and change the game. "



"Hey everyone-- so sorry to upset anyone! Puissance means force and power,
and my parodic title was meant in the spirit of intervention, subversion,
of re empowerment. So sorry to cause a problem -- last thing I was
intending. Looking forward to some real dialogue."

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 1:54 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi everybody, since the beginning of the month, every time someone
> encountered an idea or subject, or image one disagreed with, the reaction
> has been one of outrage and dismissive withdrawal or one-liners instead of
> engaging with the adverse statement or object, maybe assuming that other
> *might* have a legitimate point of view. This is extremely unfortunate.
> Finally, as an outsider (not completely part of the digital world), was
> invited to be the guest moderator to bring "different" ideas, approaches,
> points of view, to a small degree, to resist the splintered echo chambers
> that digital world is prone to create. From the beginning, the idea was not
> to agree or disagree; but to engage, hoping that from that engagement new
> thoughts, unexpected paths of exploration may develop.
>
> *I THINK IT IS TIME TO DO THAT.*
>
> *Ciao,Murat*
>
> On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 1:12 AM, simon <s...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> On 12/11/16 12:49, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>>
>>> That was the real message
>>>
>>
>> all I really wanted to say: a porte-parole.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Simon
>>
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] under the gun

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Brett, your post was not off the topic. I had not seen Alan's post yet
because his as a guest participant had gone through to the list bypassing
my approval. I realized my mistake the moment I saw Alan's post, but did
not know how to get back to you; I wish you had responded to me. I had
slept little the night before, depressed and completely in shock, and your
post was the first thing I saw. Thank you for writing now.

Murat

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 4:47 PM, <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> I do feel I have to say this now. I respect the moderation of this list,
> so I did not make a big deal of it when Murat bounced a contribution of
> mine early Wednesday morning. The rejection: "While your post writes about
> a seismic event, it is completely off the topic of
> this week's event." My response was to Alan's heartfelt lament about the
> events of Tuesday night, and there have been Trump related, political
> responses since then. To be fair, maybe I was off topic if we parse hard
> enough, an activity I am totally not interested in in any case.
>
> The post was very controversial indeed, about the important need to
> protect people right now, and to organize community self defense as the
> first priority. By Thursday, one of my students (a woman of color, though
> you might have guessed that) had already had rocks thrown at her car by a
> white man in another car who was yelling something incomprehensible through
> closed windows and road noise. Her response to the incident is most
> inspiring! I found her in the undergrad computer lab the following day - a
> national holiday - working on her parallel compute project. She told me, we
> can't let them take away our education! I nearly broke into tears.
>
> My point is, maybe we are not really ready for what is about to happen. We
> don't want to discuss some very hard realities that exist on the ground. By
> "we" I mean specifically the kinds of liberal intellectuals and artists who
> inhabit this list. And especially I mean those most like myself: whites who
> feel less under the gun (literally) today than our brothers and sisters who
> are currently active targets. Not that I know exactly what to do, I admit.
> I just have some ideas, maybe worth rejection as ideas, and my post was a
> call to think through a very hard situation in a very serious way that as I
> perhaps indicated, will be uncomfortable to most. Assuming that I might
> have had a legitimate point of view, I will leave it to the list moderators
> to decide if that post has any merit.
> above all stay safe,
> Brett Stalbaum
>
> On 11/13/2016 10:54 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>
>
> Hi everybody, since the beginning of the month, every time someone
> encountered an idea or subject, or image one disagreed with, the reaction
> has been one of outrage and dismissive withdrawal or one-liners instead of
> engaging with the adverse statement or object, maybe assuming that other
> *might* have a legitimate point of view. This is extremely unfortunate
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Recent work on 'semiotic splatter' / introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Peter, Alan, yes. Exactly, the fight is against this discontinuity
--rather, engagement which means continuity of attention (dialogue),
something the digital institutions pull one away from.

Peter, the Fassbinder quote is very interesting, partly because it is
double edged. On the one hand, as Alan does, one can see it as an example
of splatter. On the other hand, it is also a manifesto for crossing "part
lines" (left or right).

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 12:29 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
> Hi Peter, what is that from? I remember his play Garbage, the City, and
> Death, and had a hard time following him after that.
>
> But the quote is germane; what I've been trying to do is deal with a
> phenomenology of splatter - which also relates by the way to the sped-up
> information flow online; nothing sticks, but history and depth may be lost.
> It goes back to the saying "but wait! there's more!" (not really, but) -
> and that "more" is in deep disconnect with what came before - to the extent
> that the semiosphere so to speak is constantly thrown off...
>
> - Alan
>
> On Sun, 13 Nov 2016, Peter Valente wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I've been following the comments and while reading them I'm reminded
>> of this quote from Rainer Werner Fassbinder which I think is very
>> interesting and thought provoking in light of the recent events:
>>
>> "I keep noticing all the places where something stinks. Whether that
>> is right or left, high or low, doesn't mean shit to me. And I shoot in
>> all directions, wherever I notice something stinks."
>>
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 7:34 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>> Adeenah Karasick sent a post to the list this morning. For some reason
>>> it is not appearing on the list despite my different attempts. I am sending
>>> it to the list through my own e-mail:
>>>
>>> GRAB EM BY THE PUISSANCE
>>>
>>>
>>> All through the nightmarish disbelief and utter delirium of yesterday, I
>>> kept wanting to post something here, but it felt frivolous, indulgent to be
>>> thinking about language games; about the celebration of multiplicity given
>>> the very real effects of the duplicity that we find all around us.
>>>
>>>
>>> But, in the apocalyptic aftermath of yesterday, I am awake. And I keep
>>> thinking about how language is entwined with being; (whether for
>>> Wittgenstein, Sapir Whorf or Kabbalah for that matter), language is
>>> inseparable from perception, cognition, behavior. And its very renegade
>>> multiplicitous excess, (evident in Alan?s ?splatter texts? or Murat?s
>>> interventions, our multiple readings), it?s this very Sprachspiel that will
>>> save us?it?s precisely through our attention to these ?games? that
>>> transformation and change happen.
>>>
>>>
>>> If rules of language are analogous to the rules of games; ie if saying
>>> something in language is analogous to making a move in a game, (each with
>>> its own codes, grammar, relations, contexts), and though we never fully
>>> know the rules of the game, we are always learning, internalizing, and
>>> becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, global algorithm, discovering
>>> is ALLEGO?RHYTHMS; simultaneously learning and unlearning the systems, the
>>> codes.
>>>
>>>
>>> And I think this is something that binds all 3 of us, Alan and Murat ?
>>> especially here I?m thinking of your fantastic essay at the end of "Hamlet
>>> and Its Hidden Texts: Poems as Commentary in Murat?s new Animals of Dawn
>>> (which was an amazing pleasure to read).
>>> The idea that not just that the rules are infinitely changing but that
>>> you have to go inside the game and change the game.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Adeena Karasick
>>> adeenakarasick at cs.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Foreign entanglements are not part of his central vision, except: of
>>>> course we should have a strong 

Re: [-empyre-] your language games

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi everybody, since the beginning of the month, every time someone
encountered an idea or subject, or image one disagreed with, the reaction
has been one of outrage and dismissive withdrawal or one-liners instead of
engaging with the adverse statement or object, maybe assuming that other
*might* have a legitimate point of view. This is extremely unfortunate.
Finally, as an outsider (not completely part of the digital world), was
invited to be the guest moderator to bring "different" ideas, approaches,
points of view, to a small degree, to resist the splintered echo chambers
that digital world is prone to create. From the beginning, the idea was not
to agree or disagree; but to engage, hoping that from that engagement new
thoughts, unexpected paths of exploration may develop.

*I THINK IT IS TIME TO DO THAT.*

*Ciao,Murat*

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 1:12 AM, simon <s...@clear.net.nz> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> On 12/11/16 12:49, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>
>> That was the real message
>>
>
> all I really wanted to say: a porte-parole.
>
> Best,
>
> Simon
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] your language games

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Johannes, we are caught by seismic forces the power of which is
gradually becoming clear. I have some hints what they may be:

a) The neglect of the working class since the fall of the Soviet Union and
rise of global capitalism. For international corporation, in economic
terms, there is no difference between the price of copper or of labor.
There is plenty of both, and computers infinitely facilitated for
corporations of access to capital in any place where it is cheaper. That is
what I called the "darker underside" of the computer that made this
flexibility possible. Today every worker anywhere is competing with every
worker anywhere else. Proximity/distance means nothing.

Trump (and I assume Brexit) is labor's response to this condition: No more!

b) The United States is turning into a minority majority country, and, in
essence, the European origin "white" population doesn't like it. Trump in
that sense is a counter-revolution no one expected was coming. That was the
real message of "make America great again" or "we want our country back." I
assume (though I am not sure) Brexit has exactly the same dynamic operating.

c) Isis and the Syrian Civil War. The inflow of refugees from the Middle
East to Europe has acted as a catalyst to precipitate the counter
revolution I just mentioned.

When I turned the place of the human in a game from that of a player into
that of a pawn, I was referring exactly to these historical forces that the
discussion seems to be overlooking. Unfortunately, in my view,
Wittgenstein's idea of language games that became so popular and gripped
the imagination Western intelligenttuia the last to decades functioned as a
precursor of digital world view of reality --no reality exists outside
words, as no reality exists outside the screen of the computer, that the
language, phrases one accesses on line (phrases, ironically appropriated or
not) is the same language or phrases that people have used outside the gaze
of the surfer in their daily lives.

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Johannes Birringer <
johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Not sure I can follow or want to follow your frivolous language games
> here. in the aftermath of what you call delirious or nightmarish.
> What does it mean, in socio-economic or political terms, to argue that you
> in a game at all times and (Murat suggests) as pawns at all times
> where there are no rules or infinitely changeable rules.
> and what wind exactly made the elections come out the way they did, in the
> united states or in britain?
>
> regards
> johannes birringer
>
>
> +=
> [Adeena Karasick schreibt]
>
> All through the nightmarish disbelief and utter delirium of yesterday, I
> kept wanting to post something here, but it felt frivolous, indulgent to be
> thinking about language games; about the celebration of multiplicity given
> the very real effects of the duplicity that we find all around us.
>
>
> But, in the apocalyptic aftermath of yesterday, I am awake. And I keep
> thinking about how language is entwined with being; (whether for
> Wittgenstein, Sapir Whorf or Kabbalah for that matter), language is
> inseparable from perception, cognition, behavior. And its very renegade
> multiplicitous excess, (evident in Alan’s “splatter texts” or
> Murat’s interventions, our multiple readings), it’s this very
> Sprachspiel that will save us…it’s precisely through our attention to
> these “games” that transformation and change happen.
>
>
> If rules of language are analogous to the rules of games; ie if saying
> something in language is analogous to making a move in a game, (each with
> its own codes, grammar, relations, contexts), and though we never fully
> know the rules of the game, we are always learning, internalizing, and
> becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, global algorithm, discovering
> is ALLEGO’RHYTHMS; simultaneously learning and unlearning the systems,
> the codes.
>
>
> And I think this is something that binds all 3 of us, Alan and Murat –
> especially here I’m thinking of your fantastic essay at the end of
> "Hamlet and Its Hidden Texts: Poems as Commentary in Murat’s new Animals
> of Dawn (which was an amazing pleasure to read).
> The idea that not just that the rules are infinitely changing but that you
> have to go inside the game and change the game.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] SECOND WEEK GRAB EM BY THE PUISSANCE empyre Digest, Vol 143, Issue 8

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--So, I have been obviously confused. Yes, my response is to what Adeena is
saying. Simultaneously, I was thinking about our arguments about science.
You believed that physics will give us one day a theory that synthesized
all contradictions and explained everything. I said there is no reason to
believe that, that that believe finally is an illusion.

Murat

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 7:58 PM, Alan Sondheim <sondh...@panix.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> I'm confused, Murat - that seemed to be Adeena's position, not mine.
>
>
> On Thu, 10 Nov 2016, Murat Nemet-Nejat wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>
> ==
> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
> ==
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
___
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empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
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Re: [-empyre-] Recent work on 'semiotic splatter' / introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Adeenah Karasick sent a post to the list this morning. For some reason it
is not appearing on the list despite my different attempts. I am sending it
to the list through my own e-mail:

GRAB EM BY THE PUISSANCE


All through the nightmarish disbelief and utter delirium of yesterday,
I kept wanting to post something here, but it felt frivolous,
indulgent to be thinking about language games; about the celebration
of multiplicity given the very real effects of the duplicity that we
find all around us.


But, in the apocalyptic aftermath of yesterday, I am awake. And I keep
thinking about how language is entwined with being; (whether for
Wittgenstein, Sapir Whorf or Kabbalah for that matter), language is
inseparable from perception, cognition, behavior. And its very
renegade multiplicitous excess, (evident in Alan’s “splatter texts” or
Murat’s interventions, our multiple readings), it’s this very
Sprachspiel that will save us…it’s precisely through our attention to
these “games” that transformation and change happen.


If rules of language are analogous to the rules of games; ie if saying
something in language is analogous to making a move in a game, (each
with its own codes, grammar, relations, contexts), and though we never
fully know the rules of the game, we are always learning,
internalizing, and becoming intimate with a massive, multipart, global
algorithm, discovering is ALLEGO’RHYTHMS; simultaneously learning and
unlearning the systems, the codes.


And I think this is something that binds all 3 of us, Alan and Murat –
especially here I’m thinking of your fantastic essay at the end of
"Hamlet and Its Hidden Texts: Poems as Commentary in Murat’s new
Animals of Dawn (which was an amazing pleasure to read).
The idea that not just that the rules are infinitely changing but that
you have to go inside the game and change the game.




Adeena Karasickadeenakarasick at cs.com
<http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre>



On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Foreign entanglements are not part of his central vision, except: of
> course we should have a strong military (I assume to look strong).
>
> Murat
>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 1:58 PM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Beautiful and scary Murat! And horrible true...Trump had the charisma of
>> à boa constrictor mesmerizing its prey. Hillary is clever but no charisma
>> at all.
>>
>> Skickat från min iPad
>>
>> 9 nov. 2016 kl. 13:58 skrev Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>:
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> Alan,
>>
>> Here is the opening section of my essay "Eleven Septembers Later:
>> Readings of Benjamin Hollander's *Vigilance*" which was included in
>> Benjamin's poem book *Vigilance* in 2005. It related directly to what
>> you are saying and also connects with the discussions we started here last
>> week:
>>
>> "
>>
>> I. Love and State
>>
>>
>>
>> The genius of fascism is that it is based on love. Here the
>> leviathan of state turns into a performer of gentle punishment, loving
>> duress. In most fascisms, the public at large –for a short and brute period
>> at least- is in love with its leader. Freedom is falling politically out of
>> love. In capitalist fascism the eye –*petit-pointed* with pain, and
>> yearning- is the sine qua non tool of love. By his images, the leader ogles
>> the public into his erotic, protective, parental embrace; the public
>> responds also with his eyes to this embrace. T.V. is a pornographic
>> contraption of communal fuck, a bait and switch, double-mirrored peep show,
>> while looking being looked at,  seeing while being seen into. A colossal
>> move on our clits. Freedom starts with an aversion of the eyes -a *moral
>> modesty*!- a decision not to see, the eye blurring in mist, choosing a
>> mournful blindness, which puts a stop to the erotic synergy. Freedom is a
>> vigil towards stasis –an action against flow – a “seeing” into oneself,
>> transforming the eye into an ascetic guerilla weapon.
>>
>>
>>
>> Freedom is photographic contemplation,1 contra incest.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> send home my long strayed eyes to me.
>>
>> which (oh) too long have dwelt on thee (John Donne, *The Message*)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> But now I have drunk thy sweet salt tears,
>>
>>And though thou pour more I’ll depart;
>>
>> My picture vanished, vanish fears,
>>
>> That I 

Re: [-empyre-] Recent work on 'semiotic splatter' / introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Foreign entanglements are not part of his central vision, except: of course
we should have a strong military (I assume to look strong).

Murat

On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 1:58 PM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Beautiful and scary Murat! And horrible true...Trump had the charisma of à
> boa constrictor mesmerizing its prey. Hillary is clever but no charisma at
> all.
>
> Skickat från min iPad
>
> 9 nov. 2016 kl. 13:58 skrev Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> Alan,
>
> Here is the opening section of my essay "Eleven Septembers Later: Readings
> of Benjamin Hollander's *Vigilance*" which was included in Benjamin's
> poem book *Vigilance* in 2005. It related directly to what you are saying
> and also connects with the discussions we started here last week:
>
> "
>
> I. Love and State
>
>
>
> The genius of fascism is that it is based on love. Here the leviathan
> of state turns into a performer of gentle punishment, loving duress. In
> most fascisms, the public at large –for a short and brute period at least-
> is in love with its leader. Freedom is falling politically out of love. In
> capitalist fascism the eye –*petit-pointed* with pain, and yearning- is
> the sine qua non tool of love. By his images, the leader ogles the public
> into his erotic, protective, parental embrace; the public responds also
> with his eyes to this embrace. T.V. is a pornographic contraption of
> communal fuck, a bait and switch, double-mirrored peep show, while looking
> being looked at,  seeing while being seen into. A colossal move on our
> clits. Freedom starts with an aversion of the eyes -a *moral modesty*!- a
> decision not to see, the eye blurring in mist, choosing a mournful
> blindness, which puts a stop to the erotic synergy. Freedom is a vigil
> towards stasis –an action against flow – a “seeing” into oneself,
> transforming the eye into an ascetic guerilla weapon.
>
>
>
> Freedom is photographic contemplation,1 contra incest.
>
>
>
>
>
> send home my long strayed eyes to me.
>
> which (oh) too long have dwelt on thee (John Donne, *The Message*)
>
>
>
>
>
> But now I have drunk thy sweet salt tears,
>
>And though thou pour more I’ll depart;
>
> My picture vanished, vanish fears,
>
> That I can be undamaged by that art  (JD, *Witchcraft by a Picture*)
>
>
>
>
>
> Photographic seeing wrests a trace of time into a process of
> perception, on time. The computer is the supreme sublime dialectical
> medium. Born out of military seamen, it is the womb of chaos. It is the
> *asymmetric* weapon of subversion and the tool of extreme vigilance of
> the state. Pornography is of its essence, sites of secret communication,
> loci of yearning, condensations most monitored by the state, the place
> where the eye is the common denominator of eros and control. Computer is
> where both the extremely private and extremely public fuse, and are in
> mortal conflict with each other.
>
>
>
> Born out of a belief in the freedom of light,  photography is the
> anti-digital medium, the awakener from the capital’s illusion that anything
> can be converted into anything, that gravity, the process by which objects
> hit the ground, does not exist.
>
>
>
> Thinning time and space out of air, computer points to both the
> illusion, and truth, of the Oneness of God. "
>
>
> Ciao,
>
> Murat
>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 11:21 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Alan, It is closer to me to a phenomelogy of abjection, of humiliation
>> and being overlooked. (Not that what you are referring to is not true or
>> relevant.) This election tilted in the rust belt states where for at least
>> twenty years the blue collar population was in a rut, economically stuck
>> with little expectation of improvement. Nobody did anything for them (with
>> the possible exception of the saving of the auto industry). He spoke to
>> them, and they elected him. The unfortunate thing is that nothing in the
>> *concrete* policies he is offering, as far as I can see, has anything
>> that will improve the blue collar lot. In fact, it will do the opposite.
>> The gigantic tax cuts (the  easiest and fastest laws the congress will put
>> through) will aggravate the vast divide. They seem to have been taken by a
>> snake oil salesman. I hope I am wrong. Of I am, it will make the result
>> maybe a bit more bearable.
>>
>> As

Re: [-empyre-] Recent work on 'semiotic splatter' / introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Alan,

We are wrong to consider Trump's message incoherent (except fpr us who were
deaf to its siren song):

1. Hatred of non-whites and financial self interest is at the center of
Trump's vision: a) when the Central Park five were cleared of murder due to
dna evidence, he put a full page ad in the New York Times attacking their
release and asking for their continuing incarceration. b) birtherism.

2) Knowing that the blue color whites are the foundation of his coalition.

3) He supported (at least in name) a guarantee of social security on which
the working class vitally depend.

3) He knew that he needed the evangelicals to create a national coalition
though he himself obviously has nothing to do with religion.

4) He proposed an end to the estate tax so he can pass his money to his
children and tax cuts that will benefit rich people like him, not the
working class (that's where the snake oil salesman comparison comes in).

Then he went for it.

In retrospect, his anti-Latino comments turned out to be a head fake. It
turned off the Latinos for sure. But it cemented the devotion of his
supporters for him against every sort of attack.

Murat

On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 1:41 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ana, Alan,
> Not in terms of wisdom perhaps, but in terms of economic condition the
> choice the blue collar worker made was justified. We should not condescend.
> If I am stuck in a place for years and years, I also would yearn for a time
> when factories were churning out cars, etc. Both in Germany and Italy,
> fascism rose out of a condition of chronic high unemployment and an economy
> of low paying and temporary jobs (some of it just distributing political
> hate filled leaflets) around it.People like Trump, Mussolini, Hitler
> channel the energy of that hatred against an enemy that can be demonized.
> About the condition of proloteriat prior to Fascism, the best work is
> Fassbinder's Alexanderplatz (preferably the long, ten (?) episode T.V.
> version.
>
> Murat
>
> On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>> Alan i think the parts of Hitler and Mussolinis discourses about the
>> importance of workers about the national pride and the longing for a
>> imperial past are relevant in Trump’s case as well.
>> I read some minutes ago 7 av each 10 of Trump’s voters wanted go back to
>> the 50's.
>> It means a time where the US was victorious white and wealthy where they
>> imposed the world "the American way of life" as model.
>> As Roland Barthes says it's a question of language :)
>> Ana
>>
>> Den 9 nov 2016 14:34 skrev "Alan Sondheim" <sondh...@panix.com>:
>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>
>>> There is a huge difference; Hitler etc. ran on a platform which was
>>> (horribly) coherent; Trump splatters, not only in the attacks, but also in
>>> terms of coherency. This is a very different thing; it's not to say he
>>> isn't a thug - he is - but one who wants power above all, and is less
>>> concerned about its deployment. -
>>>
>>> Alan
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 9 Nov 2016, Ana Vald?s wrote:
>>>
>>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>>>
>>>
>>> ==
>>> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
>>> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
>>> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
>>> ==
>>> ___
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Recent work on 'semiotic splatter' / introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Alan,

Here is the opening section of my essay "Eleven Septembers Later: Readings
of Benjamin Hollander's *Vigilance*" which was included in Benjamin's poem
book *Vigilance* in 2005. It related directly to what you are saying and
also connects with the discussions we started here last week:

"

I. Love and State



The genius of fascism is that it is based on love. Here the leviathan
of state turns into a performer of gentle punishment, loving duress. In
most fascisms, the public at large –for a short and brute period at least-
is in love with its leader. Freedom is falling politically out of love. In
capitalist fascism the eye –*petit-pointed* with pain, and yearning- is the
sine qua non tool of love. By his images, the leader ogles the public into
his erotic, protective, parental embrace; the public responds also with his
eyes to this embrace. T.V. is a pornographic contraption of communal fuck,
a bait and switch, double-mirrored peep show, while looking being looked at,
seeing while being seen into. A colossal move on our clits. Freedom starts
with an aversion of the eyes -a *moral modesty*!- a decision not to see,
the eye blurring in mist, choosing a mournful blindness, which puts a stop
to the erotic synergy. Freedom is a vigil towards stasis –an action against
flow – a “seeing” into oneself, transforming the eye into an ascetic
guerilla weapon.



Freedom is photographic contemplation,1 contra incest.





send home my long strayed eyes to me.

which (oh) too long have dwelt on thee (John Donne, *The Message*)





But now I have drunk thy sweet salt tears,

   And though thou pour more I’ll depart;

My picture vanished, vanish fears,

That I can be undamaged by that art  (JD, *Witchcraft by a Picture*)





Photographic seeing wrests a trace of time into a process of
perception, on time. The computer is the supreme sublime dialectical
medium. Born out of military seamen, it is the womb of chaos. It is the
*asymmetric* weapon of subversion and the tool of extreme vigilance of the
state. Pornography is of its essence, sites of secret communication, loci
of yearning, condensations most monitored by the state, the place where the
eye is the common denominator of eros and control. Computer is where both
the extremely private and extremely public fuse, and are in mortal conflict
with each other.



Born out of a belief in the freedom of light,  photography is the
anti-digital medium, the awakener from the capital’s illusion that anything
can be converted into anything, that gravity, the process by which objects
hit the ground, does not exist.



Thinning time and space out of air, computer points to both the
illusion, and truth, of the Oneness of God. "


Ciao,

Murat



On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 11:21 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Alan, It is closer to me to a phenomelogy of abjection, of humiliation and
> being overlooked. (Not that what you are referring to is not true or
> relevant.) This election tilted in the rust belt states where for at least
> twenty years the blue collar population was in a rut, economically stuck
> with little expectation of improvement. Nobody did anything for them (with
> the possible exception of the saving of the auto industry). He spoke to
> them, and they elected him. The unfortunate thing is that nothing in the
> *concrete* policies he is offering, as far as I can see, has anything
> that will improve the blue collar lot. In fact, it will do the opposite.
> The gigantic tax cuts (the  easiest and fastest laws the congress will put
> through) will aggravate the vast divide. They seem to have been taken by a
> snake oil salesman. I hope I am wrong. Of I am, it will make the result
> maybe a bit more bearable.
>
> As for the rest of the awful consequences of this result, you are right
> --desire (or hatred) will probably be the emotions stoked to get the engine
> running. Personally, I have been very reluctant to use the word "fascist"
> when I didn't like someone or some decision. But what happened here is so
> similar to what happened in the thirties in Europe, particularly in the
> case of Mussolini. A leader who jutted his chin out and projected sexual
> prowess, who inflamed the grievances (some of it justified) of the
> populaca, while at the same time making alliances with the privileged, the
> captains of industry, the Pope. A divided polity and spineless politician
> who supported him believing they could control the guy. Then a militia
> group that will "protect" the movement. Does it all sound similar?
>
> A year ago, I would have said all this is not possible in this country.
> There are laws, the constitution, etc. etc. But the open, unabashed
> contempt for the law that Trump showed without any punishment and
> reje

Re: [-empyre-] Recent work on 'semiotic splatter' / introduction

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Alan, It is closer to me to a phenomelogy of abjection, of humiliation and
being overlooked. (Not that what you are referring to is not true or
relevant.) This election tilted in the rust belt states where for at least
twenty years the blue collar population was in a rut, economically stuck
with little expectation of improvement. Nobody did anything for them (with
the possible exception of the saving of the auto industry). He spoke to
them, and they elected him. The unfortunate thing is that nothing in the
*concrete* policies he is offering, as far as I can see, has anything that
will improve the blue collar lot. In fact, it will do the opposite. The
gigantic tax cuts (the  easiest and fastest laws the congress will put
through) will aggravate the vast divide. They seem to have been taken by a
snake oil salesman. I hope I am wrong. Of I am, it will make the result
maybe a bit more bearable.

As for the rest of the awful consequences of this result, you are right
--desire (or hatred) will probably be the emotions stoked to get the engine
running. Personally, I have been very reluctant to use the word "fascist"
when I didn't like someone or some decision. But what happened here is so
similar to what happened in the thirties in Europe, particularly in the
case of Mussolini. A leader who jutted his chin out and projected sexual
prowess, who inflamed the grievances (some of it justified) of the
populaca, while at the same time making alliances with the privileged, the
captains of industry, the Pope. A divided polity and spineless politician
who supported him believing they could control the guy. Then a militia
group that will "protect" the movement. Does it all sound similar?

A year ago, I would have said all this is not possible in this country.
There are laws, the constitution, etc. etc. But the open, unabashed
contempt for the law that Trump showed without any punishment and
rejection. Politicians for their venal purposes (a tax break here, a safe
congressional seat there, etc.) supported him.

Ciao,
Murat





On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 3:14 AM, Alan Sondheim  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
> Not that it matters, but I've talked about a Trump win for the past
> fourteen months; I thought it inevitable - not because of policy, but
> because of a violent phenomenology of desire he played through. This is
> covered somewhat in the splatter text below. I'm too distraught to have an
> empyre discussion on aesthetic issues, at least at this point; I'd like to
> discuss what a phenomenology of desire might be - not only in terms of
> economic/sexist/racist fury, but also in relation to bodies and virtual
> attacks upon them. The public misogyny was nothing I've seen before; I want
> to understand this. We must learn how to resist, now, or at least open a
> discussion about this.
>
> Apologies if I'm wrong on this; it's difficult to think of anything else.
>
> - Alan
>
>
>
> On Tue, 8 Nov 2016, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>>
>>
>> My name is Alan Sondheim and I approve this message. I'm an
>> artist, writer, and musician, working in entangled media.
>>
>> Recently, I've been think of "semiotic splatter" - fragmented
>> and chaotic semiosis (the process of signification in language
>> or literature, the production of meaning), and splatter both as
>> control and dissolution. I use this term to indicate that
>> semiosis is never totalized, that it falls apart, fails,
>> coagulates and clumps; it's related to an incessant presencing
>> of material which appears more and more stale and derogated.
>> Semiotic splatter is related as well to strange attractors in
>> chaos theory and leads to the problematic of semiosis and
>> "coagulative hardening" - for example the rise of
>> totalitarianism out of (political, economic) chaos.
>>
>> The semiotic splatter work is at
>> http://www.alansondheim.org/splatter.txt - a good introduction
>> to my work in general.
>>
>> A word about my practice - to write and produce as continuous
>> praxis; ; I've been doing daily pieces (text/music/image/video)
>> since 1994, as an ongoing meditation - first, on 'cyberspace,'
>> but now extended elsewhere. The pieces are organized through a
>> series of texts; the most recent are at
>> http://www.alansondheim.org/uf.txt and
>> http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt .
>>
>> Thanks to Murat, Renate, and Timothy, for the invitation to
>> participate for the week!
>>
>> ___
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>
> ==
> email archive http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> web http://www.alansondheim.org / cell 718-813-3285
> music: http://www.espdisk.com/alansondheim/
> current text http://www.alansondheim.org/ug.txt
> ==
>
> ___
> empyre 

[-empyre-] Starting the Second Week / Adeena Karasick and Alan Sondheim

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--The origin of the computer involved the decoding of "enigma," a mystery—a 
desire to penetrate the impenetrable, the veiled, violating the inner sanctum 
of an enemy in a time of war. Demobbed, in a time of "peace," the computer 
became as aggressive tool of seduction, offering algorithmic possibilities for 
happiness and ease/ or obeisance and abjection. (I hope by the end of the day 
we don't discover that Donald Trump is the apotheosis of this virtual existence 
where a lie is equal to truth and being "bored with success" is the coin of the 
realm.)


 Both ADEENA KARASICK and ALAN SONDHEIM are intensely attuned to the deep 
effect of the computer in contemporary life and culture. While embracing and 
even ingesting its pervasive presence and adopting its tools to their 
poetic/artistic purposes, each in her or his way carries out a rear guard 
action against it, in essential ways redefining or critiquing its nature.

Worddance of a woman of valor—Salome: Canadian poet, performance artist and 
librettist ADEENA KARASICK is acutely attuned to the seductive impulse that 
lies at the heart of the computer. But she transforms its hostile functionality 
to an ecstatic dance of feminist (religious) empowerment and sensual self 
affirmation. Against an idea of infinity embedded in algorithmic 
proliferations, she posits a counter narrative—the infinity the 13th century 
Kabbalist Abulafia (the contemporary of the Sufi poets Rumi and Yunus Emre in 
Anatolia) saw within a play/dance of language. That's the way Karasick 
describes it: " For the past couple of decades, I’ve been consumed with how a 
sense of infinite linguistic play leads not to paralysis'... [But] its 
seductive swathes of color texture, image typographies are synechdochic of how 
meaning unveils itself as an ever-spiraling space where “Origin” is 
unlocateable [italics my own]." Karasick returns to the unlocatable mystery at 
the origin of the computer.  

"Artist, writer, and musician, working in entangled media," ALAN SONDHEIM is 
inherently suspicious of the ability of the computer finally to reveal the 
secret embedded in the enigma. Rather, he sees it as a series problematic codes 
full of holes, created and combined, proliferating into ever larger systems. 
Yet the gaps remain, and humanity, culture remain entangled with them. In their 
skepticism of a final "localized" meaning, Sondheim and  Karasick are similar 
to each other; but, tonally,  extremely different. For her, the continuous 
change with "unlocatable origin" is ecstatic. His is melancholy, infused with a 
sense of catastrophe and dissolution. His work is a continuous meditation on 
endless human entanglements with codes and the wounds they inflict. Here is how 
he describes it: " I have been working with computers for decades, and 
specifically with virtual worlds and motion capture for the past fifteen or so. 
I developed the notion of 'codework' to indicate works in which code is 
presenced on the surface, but problematic - works in which meaning uneasily 
inhabits distinctions among 'worlds of the work' and program-spaces. Of course 
the distinctions themselves are problematic and entangled among many other 
things, such as the body, abjection, and 'dirt' in the mix. In motion capture, 
I've worked with altered software and mapping, producing distorted avatars and 
avatar behaviors. In virtual worlds, I've been working with concepts of 
gamespace, edgespace, and blankspace"


To know more about Sondheim's vast work, one can read the interview "Surging 
Towards Abjection: an Interview with Alan Sondheim" in The Rain Taxi 
(http://www.raintaxi.com/?s=Alan+Sondheim+Interview).

 

I hope the members of the list will participate in the discussions around the 
works of these two artists.   

 ___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the First Week / Valente and Ziyalan

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"The “male gaze” is specifically about authority and power, not about
maleness as we (men and women and others) share that (which we all do).
It’s far to general a category to cover all the bases – i.e. it’s about
patriarchy’s visual field, not "males," many of whom gaze with desire but
without authority."

Michael, thank you for stressing the power dimension that underlies the
discussions on "the male gaze" -- as a short cut for an authoritarian
framing (in the West historically patriarchal) that belittles or suppresses
the desires, the point of view of the person that is looked at. That is
what is radical about 19th century photography --even as opposed to cinema
or video. The lens always as a "robot" seeing more than the photographer
does and technically not quite being efficient enough to reproduce a
"perfect" image, an ambiguous field of "imperfection" is created where
who/what is before the lens can speak and be visible, even only for an
instant. In that photographic instant, the "subject" before the lens
escapes the photographer's gaze. That photographer could be a man or a
woman.

The best example of this is perhaps Manet's painting "A Bar at the Folie
Bergere" where the woman who is painted stands up, her arms spread open on
the table in full independence; or in "Olympia" where the courtesan is
looking straight at the "lens" (yes, Manet is the most photographic of
painters, intensely conscious of the radical nature of this medium), with
zero embarrassment of her occupation. The painting captures her gaze as a
powerful act (something Godard refers to in *Histoire Du Cinema*). It is
the equal of the photographer/painter's gaze. The is no "maleness" on
either side.

In other words, one should separate seeing or looking (which can be erotic,
as well as assertive) from exploitative power. They may, but do not have to
go together. A gaze may be ecstatic, assertive or liberating.

I think that moment of ecstasy and pleasure (what Valente calls innocence)
is what his photographs are exploring.

For instance, in the pen-ultimate photograph where the woman subject lying
back is looking at the camera, in what sense is that photograph
exploitative of its subject?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Michael Boughn <mbou...@rogers.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> I just wanted to quickly weigh in at the last moment about Peter’s
> project. My own sense of this conversation is that it has been stuck in an
> aging theoretical vocabulary that is inherently moralist. It’s the moralism
> that Peter’s work here is challenging, and its mode of addressing that is
> not utopian unless you are of the school that sees moralism as inescapable.
>
>
> The “male gaze” is specifically about authority and power, not about
> maleness as we (men and women and others) share that (which we all do).
> It’s far to general a category to cover all the bases – i.e. it’s about
> patriarchy’s visual field, not "males," many of whom gaze with desire but
> without authority. The critique of that tends to moralize the imaginary
> gaze itself. But the male gaze is just one generalized relation among many,
> isn't it?; and the more gazes the merrier. It seems to me that Peter
> attempts to represent or embody a male gaze that has moved beyond both the
> authority of the patriarchal gaze and the moralist implications of the
> feminist critique of the patriarchal gaze. That’s not utopian. That’s
> urgently necessary.
>
>
> Whether he succeeds is another question. The problem is that the images
> are isolated from those other gazes. What’s crucial to the project is
> relations; multiple, complex relational gazes that undo moralisms with
> their plenitude. I can understand the informed innocence (not utopia) he is
> shooting for with his images, but their isolation mutes that experience for
> me.
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 4, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> It appears to me that underlying the heated arguments of the last few
>> days is the question of power.. Who has control on another through a medium
>> of technology, this time the camera. The posession of power is assigned
>> implicitly to the user of the camera. I would like to shift the focus a
>> little to the camera-- the camera's power, in other words, its efficiency
>> in enabling the photographer to control the final image. Is that power of
>> the machine a positive for the arts, does it not even have a moral
>> dimension?
>>
>> About two months ago I wrote a catalogue essay for the 

Re: [-empyre-] Starting the First Week / Valente and Ziyalan

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--It appears to me that underlying the heated arguments of the last few days
is the question of power.. Who has control on another through a medium of
technology, this time the camera. The posession of power is assigned
implicitly to the user of the camera. I would like to shift the focus a
little to the camera-- the camera's power, in other words, its efficiency
in enabling the photographer to control the final image. Is that power of
the machine a positive for the arts, does it not even have a moral
dimension?

About two months ago I wrote a catalogue essay for the exhibition of the
Russian photographer and conceptual artist Olga Chernisheva's black and
white drawings "Vague Accent"  at The Drawing Center in Manhattan that is
open until December 18 (http://www.drawingcenter.org/en/drawingcenter/5/
exhibitions/6/current/ ). Here is a passage from the essay "A Dialogue with
Olga:

Olga's Weak Art

iPhone6 destroyed photography, giving the photographer absolute power over
its subject. At the click of a finger, every milli-inch of one's
solipsistic reality is mastered, replicating or giving it an intensity of
codified, algorithmic hue—of a violet panoptical twilight zone. The weak
power of black and white images— rebelling.


Before hearing any argument about me calling a woman's art weak, I would
like to say Olga Chernisheva went out her way to say that this passage
represented the intention behind her drawings perfectly.


What this passage suggests is that "weakness" is an essential part of any
significant art in our our time --a vibrant weapon undercutting often from
within the all engrossing reality that the computer creates for us-- in
essence, a negative force.


One may argue about the content of Valente's photos; but there is no
question that in the processes involving the making of his films (as
described in his introductory statement) and his photographs he is trying
to create conditions of weakness where the controlling power of the framer
of the image is diminished. That is what William Bain's post is implying
when he says that the faults he saw in Valente's photos were due to a
glitch in the computer or intentional. Nevertheless, he found the blurry
intrusions or double-exposures emotionally enhancing.


That is also why I asked both Valente and Ziyalan to describe in detail in
their introductory statements the handling of their cameras creating their
images, how, for instance, Ziyalan dealt with photoshop or what kind of
cameras Valente used.


Ciao,

Murat





On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 10:35 AM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Oh my, what a difference 8 hours make! Multiple questions to my mind.
> First, to Renate's question. Why are there not more responses from women?
> Except for Renate, up to now all the discussions pro and con have been
> among men. Tim's connection to Trump for example would have been more
> convincing if it had come from a woman. I don't want this discussion to be,
> as it has been historically, among men deciding "what women want" or what
> is fair or unfair to them.
>
> It seems to me it is very relevant in Peter's photos whether the women let
> their photos be taken willingly or unwillingly. (As I said in my
> introductory remarks, what is revolutionary about the camera is that who or
> what (plants, stone, a piece of wood, the water stain on a wall, etc. have
> an independence beyond the photographer (his or her "gaze").
>
> The second issue is that I understand some of the images in these
> photographs were harvested from the internet. Here I think the problem is
> completely different and has to do with the relationship with the computer.
> I have always found the "mining" of the computer for "images" or "bits of
> language" fraught with problems. Very often the images or language are
> deracinated, uprooted from its relation to its specific place--in other
> words, the independence of what is on the other side of the screen or the
> camera (isn't the computer window actually a virtual, moving photograph?)
> has been exploited. Here I think we can talk about a male or female gaze.
>
> Ciao
>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 10:10 AM, Peter Valente <p.valente.f...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Hi Timothy,
>>
>> Did you see the photos under discussion here? Did you watch the
>> youtube video I sent?
>>
>> I have trouble seeing your claim that my photos relate to Donald
>> Trump's misogyny in any way.
>>
>> But look at the photos and tell me what you think of them.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Timothy Conway Murray <t...@cornell.edu>
>> wr

Re: [-empyre-] Intro from The Red Hookian, that is Mustafa Ziyalan

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Welcome to the site, Mustafa.

Murat

On Tue, Nov 1, 2016 at 10:53 AM, Mustafa Ziyalan 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> https://www.instagram.com/theredhookian/
>
> I was shot at. I was in bomb explosions. That was in Turkey.
>
> I watched "Blood of the Beasts" by Georges Franju, “Carnival of
> Souls" by Herk Harvey and "Der Todesking" by Jörg Buttgereit. In Austria
> I saw Hermann Nitsch’s works in blood. In Germany I saw the works of
> Gerhard Richter.
>
> In United States I saw photography of Francesca Woodman. I thought it
> was about (self)erasure, among other things. I watched "Decasia" by
> Bill Morrison.  I worked with HIV+ individuals. What ultimately
> reminded me of transience, disintegration, decay and mortality was 9/11.
>
> I experienced the Salton Sea, a phenomenon I had seen in Bill Viola's
> videos before. I took photographs. Then there was
> Hurricane Sandy. I was in Red Hook then. Cars were moving in the storm
> surge. I started taking photographs again, this time with my Android
> phone, and posting them. I wandered through places, abandoned or still
> inhabited, above or below ground. I wandered through subway stations. I
> took in the palimpsest of grime, stains, paint and posters.
>
> More recently I saw the works by D*Face.
>
> I have been using software decidedly less evolved than Photoshop:
> Gimp and GraphicConverter. I have been mainly going with what the image
> yields. I have been trying and tinkering, leaving quite a bit to chance.
>
> https://www.instagram.com/theredhookian/
>
> My images are attempts to reconstitute and move beyond things, even if
> they stumble and fail. I think it is important that I use a phone to
> take photographs.  That is the closest to capturing a glimpse while
> moving past whatever I choose to photograph. It is unobtrusive and
> discreet. This is important when you are taking a photograph of a detail
> in an elevator or hallway in the projects, in a subway station or in a
> SRO hotel.
>
> What the digital camera of the phone is able to capture from what you
> see is where you start. You may crop the image, change its brightness
> and/or contrast. Details and colors change accordingly. Where do I stop?
> When I see something as far removed from the original as possible,
> still, without becoming nondescript again. There seems to be a spot
> between the familiar and over-processed, where I pause, I think.
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
http://empyre.library.cornell.edu

[-empyre-] Welcome to November, 2016 -Overcoming Technique:Multi-Media, Dialectics or Synthesis

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--

 

Welcome to November, 2016 on –empyre soft-skinned space:

Overcoming Technique: Multi-Media, Dialectics or Synthesis? 

Moderated by Murat Nemet-Nejat (TURKEY, US) with invited discussants Peter 
Valente (US), Mustafa Ziyalan (TURKEY, US), Adeena Karasick (CANADA, US),  Alan 
Sondheim (US), Michael Boughn (CANADA), Jerome Sala (US), Chris Funkhauser (US).

 

November 1h   Week 1: Peter Valente (US), Mustafa Ziyalan (TURKEY, US)

November 8th  Week 2: Adeena Karasick (CANADA, US), Alan Sondheim (US)

November 15thWeek 3: Michael Boughn (CANADA), Jerome Sala (US) 

November 22nd   Week 4: Chris Funkhauser (US), Sally Silvers (US), Bruce 
Andrews (US)

 

The computer is now a fact of our life, and in the last decade or so its dark 
underside has become visible. In the virtual world a lie is no different than 
truth—that is mathematically and epistemologically (and politically) equal to 
each other. In the world of digital art, infinite (i.e. algorithmic) openings 
are potentially overwhelming and equal to no choice at all. Infinity 
seductively mutates to paralysis (or into the positive virtual sealed reality 
of a loopgamespace). That beauty is achieved where there is friction. Friction 
is the pod of desire, creating what is humanly infinite.

 

The above statement is only a working hypothesis—based on this moderator's 
belief that technology is first of all about the posession of power. In the 
arts (as in society), it may easily become an "easier," seductively efficient 
weapon suppressing expression. Of course, one may agree or disagree with this 
point of view. The next question has to do with the idea of truth. In the sense 
Martin Heidegger uses in his essay "The Question Concerning Technology," to 
what extent does (or doesn't) digital technology lead to the revelation of "the 
truth" in the arts? The third question has to do with the concept of 
multi-media. Is the goal of multi-media progressive to achieve an ideal 
Wagnerian synthesis or is it more dialectical—each acting on the other 
reflectively (as is the case in a translation) revealing the other's nature and 
limits, the gap separating them as powerful and relevant as the desire for 
union. These are all open questions.

 

The guests this month all work both within and outside the digital world and 
are intensely conscious of the questions raised above. Peter Valente creating 
his filmic and photographic images uses oppositional techniques to bypass the 
cooked perfection and colors of photoshop images. Mustafa Ziyalan, on the other 
hand, uses the cellphone, including the manipulation of colors, to depict the 
chaos he sees around himself. Alan Sondheim, in his multi-media work of recent 
years, often contrasts in the same work a text subjected to digital procedures 
with a piece of acoustic music performed on a single musical instrument. Adeena 
Karasick reverses technology's relationship to power, wresting it back by 
creating a poetics based on 12th century Kabbalah principles. In performances, 
the poems culminate in ecstatic, erotic-mystical sequences—what the critic 
Maria Damon calls "the wall of sound"—where words—often neologisms or word 
combinations invented by the poet—richochet against each other. The poems may 
use visual and audio digital effects, but always words and the poet's body 
performing them is at the center. Along with the controversial poet Kent 
Johnson, Michael Boughn is the founder of the blog Dispatches whose basic goal 
is to archive texts and elicit discussions that go against the grain of 
contemporary artistic, literary or political opinion. Jerome Sala is interested 
"in the poetics of corporate and digital jargon and the new subjectivities to 
which these languages give rise." His forthcoming book of poetry is 
Corporations Are People, Too! Chris Funkhauser explores digital poetry as a 
new, independant form with unique pssibilities where the verbal, visual and 
aural achieve a fluid sysnthesis and potentially infinite versions of a work 
coexist simultaneously, depending on the reader's/player' choices.

 

This month of November, 2016 I invite the –empyre subscriber list to discuss 
these issues in our soft-skinned space with our distinguished group of weekly 
guests.

 

Murat

 

TO MAKE A POST TO THE SUBSCRIPTION LIST USE:

<empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>

 

TO ACCESS ARCHIVES USE THIS URL:

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TO ACCESS THE WEBSITE FROM THE CORNELL SERVER TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT EMPYRE GO 
TO:

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Biographies:

Moderator:

Murat Nemet-Nejat (TURKEY, US) is a poet, essayist, translator from Turkish 
poetry and editor. He is presently working on his poem "Camels and Weasels." 
His recent publications include his translation from th

Re: [-empyre-] Response to Anna: Nick Knouf, MAICgregator

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"...creation of networks, or, as they are called in the internet world,
communities of consumers, who coproduce innovation, diversification, and
identification with the brand, on the basis of open source’ (from the
Violence of Financial Capitalism, p. 56).

Marazzi takes this further to suggest that it is  ‘living-labour’ (by which
he means work covering all forms of life including working as and in
leisure, sleep time, life administration etc AND all the services required
to keep this living labour alive such as the health and education
industries) that sustains the ‘innovation’ necessary for financial capital
to deliver value for its shareholders. (this is a very reduced version of a
complex argument!). Financialisation creates value (since it has no other
mode of productivity) byparasitising on the creativity of living labour
(which it also co-produces)..."

Hi Anna, unless I misunderstand what he is saying, Marazzi has it
backwards. In the Google model, the only thing Google produces is eyeballs.
In other words, from the financial angle, we the users are not the
consumers but the product. Google monetizes itself by selling use to the
advertizers. It appears to me that is the scariest part of the net. We are
complicit in our becoming pure data. Perhaps the situation is clearer in
social media like Facebook, but it is equally true with Google.

"parasitising on the creativity of living labour"
The living labor that is being parasitized is ourselves.

In the net, is there  any "innovation" any more that is more than a
"condition reflex" ruse to increase our participation in this vicious cycle
of production?

Ciao,
Murat



On Fri, Sep 16, 2016 at 6:17 PM, Anna Munster  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Yes I agree Christiane, it does depend on how you define ‘finance’…and
> this is perhaps the interesting thing and one reason I thought it would be
> a great place to begin a discussion on ‘now’ and ‘then’ in net.art….
> I’m referring more to the idea of ‘financialisation’ as descriptive of
> contemporary capitalism. This goes further than the idea that it is the
> finance sector that both creates both capital (wealth) and crisis in
> contemporary capitalism - this is pretty much standard economic theory.
> Rather I am thinking off the back of theorists such as Christian Marazzi
> who tie financialisation directly to new ‘models’ of production and
> consumption or ‘the Google Model’. To quote Marazzi: 'The creation of
> networks, or, as they are called in the internet world, communities of
> consumers, who coproduce innovation, diversification, and identification
> with the brand, on the basis of open source’ (from the Violence of
> Financial Capitalism, p. 56).
>
> Marazzi takes this further to suggest that it is  ‘living-labour’ (by
> which he means work covering all forms of life including working as and in
> leisure, sleep time, life administration etc AND all the services required
> to keep this living labour alive such as the health and education
> industries) that sustains the ‘innovation’ necessary for financial capital
> to deliver value for its shareholders. (this is a very reduced version of a
> complex argument!). Financialisation creates value (since it has no other
> mode of productivity) by parasitising on the creativity of living labour
> (which it also co-produces)
>
> This then places ‘net. art’ in a very precarious and paradoxical position.
> Many of the early ‘nettime’ discussions from around 1997 were about the
> ways in which ‘net.art’ superseded and subverted an art market or ‘art on
> the net’ (the use of the web to promote art by the GLAM sector). Net art
> cut out middle people, bypassed curators, blurred the distinction between
> artist and audience/participant/artwork etc. BUT this is exactly the same
> mode of production Marazzi is talking about as ‘the Google model’….to what
> extent, then, is net art not simply an extension of financialisation (and
> of course at the other end, Nick’s post precisely shows the extent to which
> living labour is required to maintain net art).
>
> So, then, yes… I think eToy is a really interesting example because it
> has since 1994 pushed this relation of the network to living labour to an
> extreme by, as they say, ‘twisting values’….a very clever ‘corporate’ logo!
>
> cheers
> Anna
>
>
>
>
> Anna Munster
> Associate Professor,
> Faculty of Art and Design
> UNSW
> P.O Box 259
> Paddington
> NSW 2021
> Australia
> a.muns...@unsw.edu.au
> http://sensesofperception.info
>
>
> > On 17 Sep 2016, at 3:13 AM, Christiane Paul, Curatorial <
> christiane_p...@whitney.org> wrote:
> >
> > --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> > It depends on how you want to define and delineate network and finance
> --  the ToyWar ultimately was a project very related to finance / the stock
> market, and eToy of course early on used 

Re: [-empyre-] net-art author and reader positions

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Colin,

"As networks increasingly engage non-human actors, is the position of a
single (human) reader more and more marginalized?"

A more dystopian, and in my opinion realistic, vision  would be if the
"non-human actors" were humanized. In one sense, human means familiar.
Therefore, we may feel comfortable speaking to androids, starting to "feel
their pain." I think, inhumanity, in the sense of distance, either in the
work or the reader, is essential in any "parodic" art. *The Spiritual Life
of Replicants* to some extent explores this issue.

Let me give an current political parallel to make my point. For me, it is
almost impossible to imagine a more alien, therefore "inhuman," being than
Donald Trump (who in his total narcissism is by definition alien from his
surroundings) to be the president. In the last few weeks, we see the
population getting gradually accustomed, therefore comfortable, to the idea
of his becoming president (even though people see him also as a fascist).
That is a precursor to humanity adopting itself to an algorithmic network.

These are just a few thoughts on the spur of the moment.

Ciao,
Murat



On Fri, Sep 9, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Colin Post <colincp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hello Craig, Murat, et al.,
>
> I just wanted to chime into the discussion by pushing our notions of what
> constitutes the author and reader positions in net-art. Craig, you've
> articulated one author-position as a kind of clockmaker/writer-of-the-network
> into which the reader steps as another player in the protocols of the
> network. You've certainly also problematized and qualified this
> position—often the artwork will parody or serve to demonstrate the
> strictures of the net; the network may also work against the author's
> intentions as messages drift or spread, perhaps a counter-logic of the net
> that the author had not anticipated beginning to take over.
>
> However, I also wanted to think of ways that we might qualify or
> problematize the position of the reader. What are some works that enable
> the reader to claim authority/authorship? Are there works that encourage
> the reader to break or work against the intentions of the net (I'm thinking
> of much of Heath Bunting's work), even if only in a stance of parody. Is
> breaking a net-art work (hacking it, dismantling it, rooting out holes in
> the established protocol of the work) a valid means of engagement?  As
> networks increasingly engage non-human actors, is the position of a single
> (human) reader more and more marginalized?
>
> I don't have any ready answers for these questions, but wanted to
> stimulate discussion in the direction of thinking about the reader/user
> position. There has certainly been a wave in art historical criticism the
> last couple decades to think about reader-reception. I think this critical
> stance is especially applicable for net-art, but I wonder if we need to
> develop a whole new set of critical-analytical categories to talk about
> reader/user/viewer experience of net-art.
>
> Thanks for a great start to the discussion.
>
> Best
>
> Colin Post
> Doctoral Candidate
> School of Information and Library Science
> University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
>
> On 9/8/2016 10:00 PM, empyre-requ...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au wrote:
>
>> Send empyre mailing list submissions to
>> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>
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>>
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>>
>> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
>> than "Re: Contents of empyre digest..."
>>
>>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space------
>>
>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Re: Week One on Through the NET: Net Art Then and Now
>>(Murat Nemet-Nejat)
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Thu, 8 Sep 2016 13:50:09 -0400
>> From: Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
>> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>
>> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Week One on Through the NET: Net Art Then and
>> Now
>> Message-ID:
>> 

Re: [-empyre-] Week One on Through the NET: Net Art Then and Now

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

es Hopkinson’s hoaxes and stunts
> around the time he was signing the Declaration of Independence) as amateurs
> in a time of upheaval and revolt. The net-art and “conceptual [or
> medium-less] art” in general suggest where the best “philosophy" is
> happening.
>
> Instructions #3
> When the artist Ray Johnson produced net-art he sent a half-completed
> collage, scribble, or his iconic bunny-doddle to a “reader” (to borrow
> Murat’s term below) he would include a simple instruction to complete (or
> at least continue) the work and send it on to a name and address. The name
> was usually a celebrity among the readers — like the librarian at MoMA,
> Clive Phillpot, or Andy Warhol … and the address accurate. It was known
> that someone like Phillpot would, against the wishes of his administrators,
> save and archive all of these “on-sendings.” So, the “reader” would be
> stuck in a desirous network — send it on and be ensnared in clock-maker’s
> scheme (Ray Johnson would manipulate you as reader-as-part-of-the-work) —
> It was like a Lacanian paranoid phantasmagoria where the subject or reader
> is a part of the poem (not a poet).
>
> So, become a reader by yielding to the initiative of the network.
>
> That said, the net-art already discussed often mimics, parodies, or spoofs
> the pernicious notions of the network as the new locus of surveillance (see
> Hassan Elahi’s work that surveils himself as if working for the NSA),
> terror (see Ricardo Dominguez’s work), control of contested spaces and
> borders (see J. Craig Freeman’s augmented reality interventions), and
> public interactions (see many of the social action artists — or
> scholar-artists like Lone Koefoed Hansen or Søren Pold) — I include Pold in
> this short list because he has put poem-making and reading machines in
> libraries throughout Denmark. The Pirate Party also Beuys' the many
> political organizations (and including manifestoes that led to the origins
> of the Green Party).
>
> So, instruction #3 is to borrow the network and systems — perhaps with a
> parodic tone — as an element of net-art.
>
> Ciao and thanks,
> Murat! — an important name in the 18th century — especially in Naples.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sep 7, 2016, at 1:31 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Craig,
>
> Thank you for the clarity and boldness of your first gambit.
>
> "Often, though the artist-function is algorithmic and instructions for an
> open-system, the artist function is both more controlling (see the
> definition of a p-bot) -- watch-maker like -- and less (once it is out
> there among the undefined networks of other p-bots). In celebrating early
> work on rhizomes.org, there is a discussion of Petra Cortwright's explicitly
> unintentional artwork on YouTube that emphasized her amateur status. The
> amateur is not a professional."
>
> I like your 18th century reference. Then, the net-artist becomes the
> Newtonian god or, more precisely, the job (that of the clock-maker who then
> disappears) assigned to god in that universe.
>
> What happens to "the reader" in that net-universe then. One should not
> forget that in Newtonian metaphysics (science) one can not change anything;
> but only "discover" the laws governing events, fact. If so, there is
> nothing open-ended in net-art. The "reader" (any interacter with the
> work) can only discover the depth (the digital wisdom, you might say) of
> the algorithm. Making the net-artist through his/her programing basically a
> god, are you not making him/her infinitely powerful, the very opposiye of
> the open-endedness you suggest net-art creates? Can we not say the opposite
> is as true? The reader (ultimately I would claim the artist
> himself/herself) is helpless.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Craig Saper <csa...@umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Instructions #2
>> Zooming in on our opening gambit to turn -empyre- into a net-art
>> experiment (or a set of instructions that could potentially do so in some
>> theoretical future), then we can appreciate the shift from demarcating to
>> listing/using a series of functions and effects.
>>
>> Two attributes in art that use the situation of a network as a canvas.
>> The first is to "write" the work as an open-constraint set of instructions
>> (either algorithmic or listing). One can send/apply the instructions either
>> to bots, people, or (in the case of listserv) to an unknown identity (let's
>> call ourselves p-b

Re: [-empyre-] Post #1: Background frameworks

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Joanna, thank you for this brilliant introduction. A few days ago, wbhen
I posted that data (statistics) itself is malleable (not objective), I was
pointing exactly to what you state here-- that statistics, by its very
structure and claim to objectivity, is authoritarian and tends to reinforce
patriarchal (i.e. authoritarian) institutions, regardless of who generates
it. As you write, "Feminism is structural and systematic, not thematic or
topical."

One little aside about sexual ambiguity across cultural line: Turkish
pronouns have no gender or human-non-human distinction. "He," "she" or "it"
are the same. In my translations of Turkish poetry into English I reinforce
these ambiguities (rather than "clarifying" them). That way the translation
becomes an implicity critique of the target language.

I am glad someone from literature, particularly poetry with intense
consciousness of words, is entering this discussion.

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 12:07 PM, Johanna Drucker 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Feminist Data Practices:  Post #1 Background frameworks
>
> I have been enjoying the rich conversation over the last two weeks, and
> the constellation of positions and activities described and referenced:
> critical artworks, activism, contemporary theory, anthropology, and
> substantive engagement  with the ways data pratices are used to reinforce
> power relations along traditional gender lines. Rather than comment on
> these directly, I going to sketch a few  general points, to see how they
> resonate with or otherwise illuminate some of this work. I work within a
> feminist subject position (strategies, values), rather than an explicitly
> feminist practice ( topics, themes).
>
> When I think of feminist data practice, I think first of the specific,
> focused, activist work called for, for instance, in a Gates Foundation post
> in the NY Times this week
>  that pointed to the fact that absence of data about women contributes
> to disparities in resource allocation for education, health care, basic
> human services. This work is crucial.
> But just as we have long been aware of the distinction between gendered
> practices/identities and biologically sexed bodies (not to
> mention categorical distinctions about girl/woman
> distinctions in different cultures), we are also aware that such
> directed activism, by its very instrumentalism, can work to reinforce the
> very imbalances of patriarchy it may intend to
> redress. So, collection of data about real women's lived lives has to be
> supported, but critical caveats have to be used to extend the work and its
> assumptions. Laura Mandell's
> recent critique of work being done through computational analysis of
> biologically gendered writing practices in the literary corpus shows how
> complicated gender becomes within linguistic and narratological
> expressions, as well as their social/cultural underpinnings in the
> identities of authors writing as men, women, in assumed voices, identities,
> conventions. At the core of her argument is the recognition that data is
> not self-evident in language than it is in the phenomena of  the social,
> natural, physical, or cultural worlds. The constructed-ness of data, much
> commented upon already in this thread, is a feminist issue because the
> claims to authority that derive from positivist, absolute,
> observer-independent constructions of knowledge are authoritarian,
> patriarchal in their structure and operation, even if not always aligned
> with or articulated by men. Feminism, as we know, is not (just) a women's
> issue. The undoing of structures and dynamics of oppression cuts
> across  the hierarchies and positions locked into its enactment. Feminism
> is structural and systematic, not thematic or topical.
>
>  These preliminary remarks are meant to make clear how I see the projects
> I am involved in as critical data practices from a  feminist point of view:
> Temporal Modelling, begun in 2000, at the University of Virginia (created
> with a team that included Bethany  Nowviskie, Andrea Laue, Jim Allman, and
> Maura Tarnoff, at different times) was conceived as a graphical platform in
> which  interpretative work could be enacted directly through visual means,
> creating structured output (XML) from an authored,  subjective, point of
> view. Many other concepts and issues weave through this project, which,
> thanks largely to Allman and Nowviskie, reached a functional
> proof-of-concept stage. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/time/project/
> The fundamental critique of hegemonic approaches to temporality,
> particularly, coming up with alternatives to the timelines of empirical
> sciences and replacing them with temporal models rooted in
> hermeneutic ones, carried over into the design of the Ivanhoe Game between
> 2002 and about 2007. Incorporating point of view within the 

Re: [-empyre-] on the prominence of the semiotic

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Lee,

If I remember correctly, in your post you were emphasizing the granular
materiality of the digital image (therefore, somehow transcending the
representational quality of the camera obscura image). Yes, I was referring
to the creation of the image in the camera obscura photography where the
created image depends on the efficiency (in the 19th century often the
inefficiency) of the receiving medium to record the light coming from the
object. Is that movement of light which often creates uncontrollable
distortions in the representing image any less material than a coded
(mediated) sensory image created digitally?

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 1:13 PM, Lee Mackinnon  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Here is some attempt to respond to the points raised by Aviva and Lauren:
> There is always so much to say, I find it hard to draw it into a salient
> nugget! But I will try to give a sense of my thinking:
>
> It is interesting to consider representation as privileging the semiotic-
> but it is also useful to consider that the semiotic is a means of
> expressing thought, action and presence that begins with the body, even as
> perhaps, moves us toward more extreme forms of abstraction. And that even
> these forms of abstraction are increasingly relevant to the realm of
> digital materiality that now constitutes our everyday lives. for example,
> here we are, in this discussion, reliant on invisible systems of
> abstraction such as quantum mechanics and binary code that facilitate this
> conversation about bodies. This network/ discussion is no less reliant upon
> our bodies than the thought that can be abstracted into it! While human
> thought systems and the database can be distinguished by qualitative
> differences (as Hayles puts it, human thought systems have been developed
> through narrative that is not possible for databases), they are
> co-collaborators in constructing meaning here.
>
> It is interesting to consider that computers were once human groups of
> calculators (very often women, as it was considered basic, manual labour),
> and that the digital refers to fingers used to perform calculation (why we
> also have a decimal system: 10 fingers, even though it is not necessarily
> the most effective number base for mathematics)... I might contest the idea
> that what happens in the mind or in semiotic application (whether in
> mathematics or language) could be distinguished from somatic experience. I
> think this is erroneous and disingenuous considering the context of this
> discussion!
>
> Kay O' Halloran (2009) notes that, 'The semiotic construal of thought in
> written form permitted the study of ideas and the hierarchical development
> of knowledge'. It is the hierarchical development of knowledge that has
> been problematic rather than semiotic forms per se, which are extremely
> effective, complex, and even beautiful.
>
> For me, a feminist data visualisation is one that begins to first unearth
> and re-navigate assumed meanings- an exploration of technics that always
> begins and ends with the bodies whose presence has been overwritten, or
> written out of these hierarchies of knowledge, or forms of production.
>
> As regards Murat's question concerning the camera obscura and the digital
> image- can you narrow the question somewhat- is it the function of the
> camera obscura, or the image that results from capturing it, either by
> drawing it or capturing it on a light sensitive surface? In other words, is
> it the technical system of representation or the representation of the
> image itself that interests you?
>
> I look forward to more thoughts!
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Lee Mackinnon
> Lecturer  - BA (Hons) Photography
>
> +44 1202 363281
> lmackin...@aub.ac.uk
>
> Arts University Bournemouth
> Wallisdown, Poole
> Dorset, BH12 5HH
> United Kingdom
>
> aub.ac.uk
>
> Tweet us @inspiredAUB
> Find us at facebook.com/inspiredAUB
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> The contents of this communication are confidential and intended solely
> for the use of the named recipient(s). If you have received this email in
> error please delete it and do not disseminate, distribute,copy or alter it.
> Any views or opinions expressed are those of the author and do not
> necessarily represent those of ArtsUniversity Bournemouth.
>
> Although Arts University Bournemouth has taken reasonable precautions to
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> responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or
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> **
>
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> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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Re: [-empyre-] On the limits of critique (d'Ignazio) and the limits of representation (Barad)

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi, this discussion is occurring under the compulsion/framework of a
mind/body dichotomy in which one must choose or "prioritize" one over the
other. But this dichotomy at least in the West was created in 17th century,
principally by Descartes. It is precisely the kind of "male" structure that
the present group is fighting against. Isn't the abolishing the framework
itself (the assumption and perception of a mind/body dichotomy a better way
of asserting a new vision?

Ciao,
Murat

On Tue, Jul 5, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Lauren Klein 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> I, too, am chiming into this discussion late—
>
> In response to Catherine, Aviva challenges the view of visualized
> representation as “primarily a semiotic system,” and writes:
>
> > I am interested in the space between of what the body knows that we
> ignore, and what the mind knows, that doesn’t seem to require the body. I
> would be curious to know where others might be locating the negotiation of
> that complicated space.
>
> To me, this points to the most challenging aspects of articulating a
> theory and practice of feminist data visualization: the desire to insist
> upon the centrality of the body, and of matter more generally, at the same
> time that we must acknowledge certain physiological aspects of perception.
> As it has been theorized— insofar as it has been theorized at all—
> visualization so strongly prioritizes the latter, that any feminist
> intervention must necessarily emphasize the former. I don’t think it’s
> “falling into the trap” that Haraway warns about, as much as it is a
> forceful insistence that bodies, and the social and material contexts of
> bodies, matter too.
>
> Also, hello!
>
> By way of belated introduction, I will say a bit about my background and
> visualization work—
>
> My training is as a literary scholar, with a focus on the writing of the
> early United States (ca. 1790-1830). I became interested in visualization
> when I attempted to employ some digital tools to visualize my archival
> data, and was struck by the confluence between concerns about “archival
> silences,” or gaps in the archival record, and similar discussions in the
> critical visualization community about the limits of the visual
> representation. Since then, I’ve begun work on a project about the history
> of data visualization, with a particular focus on examples that challenge
> our preconceptions about what visualization can and should do. One of these
> is the work of Elizabeth Peabody, which you can read about (and see
> examples of) here:
>
> http://medium.com/genres-of-scholarly-knowledge-production/visualization-as-argument-and-on-the-floor-736bb8859cf
>
> I’m interested in how her conception of visualization is one that
> prioritizes interpretation, and is designed to facilitate multiple
> interactions between producers and perceivers of knowledge. Also worth
> noting is that her designs were enormous, and the intended mode of
> interaction was truly embodied: viewers stood around a rug-sized image,
> discussing the patterns that they saw. This feature has prompted me and my
> lab group to begin to rematerialize the “mural charts,” as she called them,
> using individually addressable LEDs and conductive fabric. (You can read
> about our progress on our lab blog here: http://dhlab.lmc.gatech.edu/blog/).
> I’m hoping these artifacts, simultaneously historically situated, tactile,
> and embodied, will prompt further conversation about the uses and limits of
> visualization.
>
> Very much looking forward to this conversation.
>
> Lauren
>
>
> --
> Lauren F. Klein, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> School of Literature, Media, and Communication
> Georgia Institute of Technology
> Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
> lauren.kl...@lmc.gatech.edu
>
>
>
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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Re: [-empyre-] On the limits of critique (d'Ignazio) and the limits of representation (Barad)

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Lee,

I noticed that your background is in photography. In the light of what you
are saying about representation, could you give your views about the
differences between camera obscura photography and digital photography?

Ciao,
Murat

On Sat, Jul 2, 2016 at 7:03 AM, kanarinka  wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Regarding the limits of critique -- A reference that I have found useful
> that comes more from a design perspective is the human-computer interaction
> paper on Feminist HCI by Shaowen Bardzell: http://wtf.tw/ref/bardzell.pdf
>
> If you read the last page of that paper you see she suggests that there
> are two approaches to doing feminist human computer interaction -
> "critique-based" and "generative". I'm pasting her definition of what those
> mean below. While both are very important, I'm personally more interested
> in the "generative" approach and feel that there is lots of work to do in
> that area.
>
> Quoting Bardzell:
> * Critique-based contributions rely on the use of feminist approaches to
> analyze designs and design processes in order to expose their unintended
> consequences. Such contributions indirectly benefit interaction design by
> raising our sensibilities surrounding issues of concern.
>
> * Generative contributions involve the use of feminist approaches
> explicitly in decision-making and design process to generate new design
> insights and influence the design process tangibly. Such contributions
> leverage feminism to understand design contexts (e.g., “the home” or the
> “workplace”), to help identify needs and requirements, discover
> opportunities for design, offer leads toward solutions to design problems,
> and suggest evaluation criteria for working prototypes, etc.
>
> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 5:37 PM christ...@christinamcphee.net <
> christ...@christinamcphee.net> wrote:
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
>
> This is exactly what Katie Anania and I were talking about, that cold day
> in Washington DC when we had each been turned out, by chance, of our
> respective access to national archives.  Liberating the ‘subject’ means no
> longer ‘representing the subject’.
>
>
> — but can you give us, Lee, a bit more about your thinking… ‘whether we
> are post-representation’  Perhaps a snippet or quote from your paper…
>
>
>
> On Jul 1, 2016, at 9:54 PM, Lee Mackinnon  wrote:
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>
> I want to pick up on something that Catherine d' Ignazio mentioned in her
> introductory text earlier on the limits of critique. This has been on my
> mind recently after I gave a paper at the London Conference of Critical
> Thought, Birkbeck in London. The paper discussed several articles by Karen
> Barad: the first exploring the limits of critique (amongst other things);
> the second, exploring the limits of representation. For Barad (2012),
> critique is over- utilised and to the detriment of feminism, being
> dismissive rather than deconstructive, and relying on rhetoric. She is also
> critical elsewhere of a reliance upon 'representationalism', which has come
> to seem natural- there is a notion that representation takes precedence
> over matter itself, whether through language or visual means (2003). The
> digital can interestingly frame these ideas, because, for example, the
> digital image or object is granular, evolving and ontological. Its
> materiality highlights a move away from the representationalism of the
> pre-digital. Perhaps this consideration of materiality before ideas of
> representation and content take hold and precedence, can be helpful (what
> Catherine refers to as 'situated' knowledge) What if data visualisations
> were treated as ontological objects, rather than representations?... I am
> wondering whether we are post-representation, whatever that may mean... I
> could say much more-- but perhaps that gives a few ideas for now...
>
> Lee Mackinnon
> Lecturer  - BA (Hons) Photography
>
> +44 1202 363281
> lmackin...@aub.ac.uk
> aub.ac.uk
>   
> 
>
> The contents of this communication are confidential and intended solely
> for the use of the named recipient(s). If you have received this email in
> error please delete it and do not disseminate, distribute,copy or alter it.
> Any views or opinions expressed are those of the author and do not
> necessarily represent those of Arts University Bournemouth.
>
> Although  Arts University Bournemouth has taken reasonable precautions to
> ensure no viruses are present in this email, the University cannot accept
> responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or
> attachments.
> ___
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> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
> ___
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> 

Re: [-empyre-] (no subject)

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Derek,

Let me clarify my position. I am a Jew from the Middle East who grew up in
Istanbul, but I have lived in the States for over forty years. Though I see
the issues raised by "liquid blackness" relevant and provocative, I do not
see them purely from a racial point of view. I saw "liquid blackness" as a
concept relevant to any discussion on the relationship between the powerful
and the oppressed or suppressed or manipulated. For me the consciousness of
"liquid blackness" provided a way to fight, to be less susceptible to
psychological or cultural manipulation. It was basically, as I saw it, a
political concept. That is why I brought in the subject of using the word
"Nigger" in the title of my translation "The Nigger In the Photograph." In
my use of it, the word did not refer to race, but a boy prostitute--of
course, making a link of brotherhood so to speak, between that boy who was
an urchin on Istanbul docks and the black in the United States. During this
past week, I felt the discussion was much more strictly racial, black
artists/thinkers speaking to black artists/thinkers. The quote I included
in my previous post starting the post "'what if we all took time to
make black art?'..." referred to that.

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Derek Murray <
derekconradmurray6...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Hi Murat,
>
> My apologies for the slow reply.
>
> Blackness is a highly contested terminology, so I would say that my
> definition of it would defer from the other respondents. Perhaps we
> should individually define it? I suggest asking Tommy, since I was
> initially responding to his query.
>
> Derek
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
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>
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Re: [-empyre-] Liquid Blackness- Week II: Aesthetics

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--"I have so many thoughts going through my head as I read your exciting
posts! In regard to Tommy’s question: 'what if we all took time to
make black art?'..."

Hi Derek, is "black" in the above passage meant in a general sense or are
the arguments since the beginning of the week are black artists/thinkers
addressing black artists/thinkers and referring to the same?

Ciao,
Murat

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 8:17 AM, Thomas F. DeFrantz 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> oh sigh.  the figure of the slave.  it hurts me so deeply, this connection
> of blackness to the figure of the slave. it is inevitable and totalizing?
> I hope not, as an afro-optimist.  yes, I can be reduced to something else,
> but why would I want that for myself or for the people I love?  or for
> anyone? my great-great-grandmother bought her freedom; when I was little we
> kept her slave papers on the kitchen table.
>
> when I dance, I change my shape in order to express; when I sing, I alter
> my breath to demonstrate my ability to work in-between.  why would I
> theorize from a place where I cannot maneuver, from a place as a slave,
> when I could theorize from my creative practice, as a black person?
>
> and I am black, and there is an ontology to black life that embraces my
> being black. I don't consider this a concept in and of itself; it's more of
> a truth, which can have claims made against it, or can find itself to be
> always already pre-figured. I don’t want to not be black or to imagine
> outside of black, or to think of blackness as contingent and possibly
> impossible.  I don't want to think of black as temporary or detachable.
>  that hurts me in the ways that misogyny and homophobia hurt me. (have you
> heard of HB2 here in north Carolina?)  I can't productively theorize
> outside of my body in good faith (yes faith) because, well, why would I
> want to do that?  it goes against what I understand to be the materiality
> of my blackness and its fact; I theorize through my body and its gestures
> rather than the *idea* of its gestures.
>
> I'm not an object; I'm not a black body; I'm a black person with
> complexities born of 3 billion neurons firing.  well, this is how I will
> narrate myself.
>
> my insistence comes from our focus on aesthetics.  aesthetics are systems
> of thought and ideology made manifest; there are obvious and
> well-documented black systems of aesthetics.  they aren't metaphorical or
> interpretive only; they are practical ways to approach rhythm; to approach
> contradiction and embellishment as structural matter; to address concerns
> of velocity and attack; to embody the performance or demonstration of
> metaphor; the persistence of derision and irony as creative craft.  black
> performance is political in its eternal concern with relationships among
> (black) people.  its aesthetics are of the *now* rather than the
> 'what-came-before' or what might happen tomorrow.  in these aesthetic
> structures we do things *now,* because we must, we become the thing we
> dance.
>
> black aesthetics are harder to apply to visual objects that exist through
> time, because black aesthetics are concerned with right now.   so we
> interpret objects and texts, but that experience is very different from
> running the sanctuary, or holding a neighbor's baby while our cousin dances
> in the pageant.
>
> for me, the in-betweeness comes in the multi-sensory imperatives of black
> performance and its aesthetics, that demand widened abilities to process in
> several registers simultaneously.  black aesthetics are always multivalent;
> we rely on rhythm to organize possibility.
>
> so ... transvaluation, yes, but not as something done because I decide so
> looking at an object, but rather in the context of political protest, a
> scream, and a swoop towards the ground and into the gutter, only to rise up
> again, wily and wet.
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au [mailto:
> empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Alessandra Raengo
> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 5:56 PM
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Liquid Blackness- Week II: Aesthetics
>
> --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Thank you,
> Derek for such a delicate and thoughtful post. The question of the fine
> line that separates the recognition of sentience from the recognition of
> pain highlights some of the most important stakes of the current
> conversation, which—I agree with Derek — is, or at least can certainly be,
> a productive type of “making.”
>
> I do want to acknowledge Marisa’s arrival and contribution to our
> discussion, which I personally find very exciting.
>
> I have questions for her:
>
> in relation to her description of formlessness as "a feeling about forms
> that exceed [the] capacity to discern pattern”, together with the
> 

Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to the -empyre- April 2016 Discussion: Liquid Blackness: Formal Approaches to Blackness and/as Aesthetics

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Yes, Jenny. Political correctness within this context is a big problem.

Murat

On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Murat Nemet-Nejat <mura...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Jenny, interestingly, "the negative of a photograph" meaning of the word
> "arab" in Turkish derives from its slang meaning. There were few black
> people in Istanbul in the lates fifties and sixties. The ones there had
> come from north Africa/Arabia from the time the territories were part of
> the Ottoman Empire. The "official" dictionary meaning of the word
> ("photographic negative") was a derivation from an earlier usage of the
> word (during the time of empire) that had survived as street/kid slang.
>
> Ciao,
> Murat
>
> On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Jenny Gunn <jgu...@mygsu.onmicrosoft.com>
> wrote:
>
>> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
>> Alessandra mentions the incredible amount of work it takes to deny race.
>> But perhaps it is also important to mention that this work is not always
>> conscious and when it is, it can even be with the best of intentions. What
>> has been very eye opening for me in becoming involved with liquid blackness
>> is the ways in which political correctness figures into the denial of race.
>> The avoidance of the issues of race with the desire not to offend or not to
>> misstep participates in the maintenance of the very fish bowl effect that
>> Morrison describes. If Murat's translation had been more politically
>> correct, it would have prevented an encounter with the imbrications of race
>> in the etymology of Arab. But these encounters should be produced, and this
>> history does not disappear simply through avoidance.
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> ___
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>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>
>
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Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to the -empyre- April 2016 Discussion: Liquid Blackness: Formal Approaches to Blackness and/as Aesthetics

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--Jenny, interestingly, "the negative of a photograph" meaning of the word
"arab" in Turkish derives from its slang meaning. There were few black
people in Istanbul in the lates fifties and sixties. The ones there had
come from north Africa/Arabia from the time the territories were part of
the Ottoman Empire. The "official" dictionary meaning of the word
("photographic negative") was a derivation from an earlier usage of the
word (during the time of empire) that had survived as street/kid slang.

Ciao,
Murat

On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 11:07 AM, Jenny Gunn 
wrote:

> --empyre- soft-skinned space--
> Alessandra mentions the incredible amount of work it takes to deny race.
> But perhaps it is also important to mention that this work is not always
> conscious and when it is, it can even be with the best of intentions. What
> has been very eye opening for me in becoming involved with liquid blackness
> is the ways in which political correctness figures into the denial of race.
> The avoidance of the issues of race with the desire not to offend or not to
> misstep participates in the maintenance of the very fish bowl effect that
> Morrison describes. If Murat's translation had been more politically
> correct, it would have prevented an encounter with the imbrications of race
> in the etymology of Arab. But these encounters should be produced, and this
> history does not disappear simply through avoidance.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
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