Re: [-empyre-] Week 1: Welcome Patrick Lichty to Flow, Impulse and Affect in Real Time

[Timothy Conway Murray]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Hi all,

In thinking about Patrick's theme for the month, "Flow, Impulse and Affect in 
Real Time," I hadn't contemplated thinking about RFTs, but more about the 
"flow" or "impulse" of 2021 media culture.  In my world of media theory, "flow" 
first takes me back to early television theory of the 80s when we thought of 
flow as the strategic wrapping into one seamless package of television 
sequences and internal advertising spots that systematically translate the 
viewers into the data of consumption. It may be that flow might work somewhat 
similarly today if we think of the succession of sequences on online media, say 
in Tik Tok, in correlation to the clicks of access that would similarly 
translate the user into consumption bits.  As Deleuze said in "Postscripts on 
Societies of Control," "individuals have become 'dividuals,' and masses, 
samples, data, markets or 'banks.'"  But I found myself very intrigued by 
Patrick's provocative linkage of flow to impulse and affect (in Real Time).  
Does impulse disturb flow, if only in providing flow with the texture of 
pulsation rather than the seamless of flow?  And what might be the correlation 
of impulse to affect?  This certainly "grabs back" (another term from tv 
theory) flow from the 'dividual,' no?, in enveloping it with impulse and affect.

Rather than RFTs, I find myself looking at various interactive installations 
where the impulsiveness of interactivity energizes links between pulse and 
affect.  Who better has experimented with this than Rafael Lozana-Hemmer whose 
large interactive installations initiate participants into the affect of 
impulse.  Take the installations in his 2019 Hirshhorn show, "Pulse," which 
literally translated the biometric and voice data of participants in the motion 
and flow of room size electronic installation.   Indeed, returning to Patrick's 
theme, the conjoining of affect and impulse happened in 'real time' as nothing 
that easily could be recorded and duplicated, if we understand the piece to 
consist of both interactor and visual interlocutor.  Here flow, (im)pulse, and 
affect merge together as colossal events beckoning users to acknowledge the 
impulsiveness of not only their spectatorial practices but also their 
inscription into larger affect-filled pools of other participants and 
incorporated bio-data.

Just a thought about how we might "claw back" the discussion in view of 
contemporary installation in "Real Time."

Happy spring,

Tim

Timothy Murray
Director, Cornell Council for the Arts and Curator, Cornell Biennial
http://cca.cornell.edu
Curator, Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art 
http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu 
Professor of Comparative Literature and English
 
B-1 West Sibley Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
 
 

On 5/12/21, 1:08 PM, "empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of 
Renate Ferro"  wrote:

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Welcome to a short Week 1 on -empyre-.  To start things off Renate Ferro 
and Tim Murray will be joined by long-time -empyre- subscriber, participant and 
moderator, Patrick Lichty.  We are thankful to Patrick for innovating this 
topic and coming up with the conceptual parameters. Biographies are below.  We 
are hoping that this broad topic warrants an array of responses from our 
membership.  Just a few thoughts to get the conversation flowing. 

The “moment”, is that moment when the body encounters the impulse of the 
event, to which is has to assimilate and then emote.  But in real time, this 
moment does not allow for assimilation, it is the constant moment of the 
impulse, or impulsive. This can be likened to “flow”, or the quality of being 
“in the zone” of 2021’s media culture. If the rapidity of images, in the 
flowing, impulsive space is in the contemporary now of media culture, can it 
then allow for reverberation,  reflection, recitation?  How might we understand 
the artistic or critical payoff from the impulse of media culture?

Looking forward.  Renate Ferro

Welcome to May 2021 on –empyre- soft-skinned space:
Flow, Impulse and Affect in Real Time
Moderated by Patrick Lichty and Renate Ferro

Guests for 
May 10th:   Week 1: Patrick Lichty, Renate Ferro, Tim Murray

Biographies for Week 1: 
Renate Ferro is a conceptual media artist who toggles between the creative 
skins of old and new technologies. Her work mobilizes opportunities for 
creative interactivity that incorporate issues relating to feminist 
psychological and sociological conditions. Ferro’s work takes on create skins 
whose configurations include installation, interactive net-based projects, 
sculpture, digital time-based media, drawing, text, and performance-based work. 
These creative skins include participatory, collaborative, generative, and 
customizable characteristics impacting the network

Re: [-empyre-] Week 1: Welcome Patrick Lichty to Flow, Impulse and Affect in Real Time

[pl]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--



 
It seems that my Outlook is not agreeing with my voyd.com servers, so I am 
going direct from my servers. 
Here are a few notes - I hope it provokes some conversation.

Since we are warming up, I thought I would put a couple more thoughts in.
I think of two events that are lodged in my consciousness that make me think of 
Virilio and the notion of living in real-time.

-in watching the NFT craze in digital art, it seems that speculation in art, on 
“gas” fees, on Ethereum pricing requires nearly a moment-by-moment attention, 
or a rigorous set of analytical tools to do it for you.  Since the NFT world is 
a new social media ecosphere, this phenomenon seems to be an expression of its 
culture.

-A space that is of interest is the twitch online gamer space that allows 
gamers to play to an audience. However, this is not only for gamers anymore, 
with art spaces like babycastles being online on Twitch for live events, and 
there is an anecdote that Beeple was on Twitch during the auction of his work.  
Although this is unverified, I find the apocryphal anecdote charged,, as the 
thought of watching Beeple’s emotional reactions moment by moment as the 
auction ran is highly affective. The idea that we want to be intensely involved 
in someone’s personal experiences is powerful, evoking McLuhan’s thought on the 
Global Village and his probe on Ann landers.

Have we entered the world of real-time, especially in the era of Zoom-time?

 



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