Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 112, Issue 23
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- On 28/03/14 07:48 AM, Felan Parker wrote: Twine is a very different beast from Game Maker or Unity. It is. It is however not a very different beast from Storyscape. And its users recapitulating the forms of 80s interactive fiction and 90s interactive multimedia using it is a good example of my argument. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 112, Issue 23
--empyre- soft-skinned space-- On 27/03/14 02:22 PM, Kara Stone wrote: I wonder how important it is that blossoming game-makers actually understand how the programs they are using work. It's important for people to know their tools if their work is not to be determined by them. Game development tools are not made by or for a different constituency from the rest of the industry. In their reification and distribution of solved technical problems they all but force recapitulation of the status quo artistically, technically and developmentally. There seems to be something in particular about game-making that makes people want to hold on to the code, hierarchizing programming and “techy-ness” above all other aspects of game-making. I went into games programming a few years after leaving art school and was gobsmacked at management's resistance to paying for some decent coloured pencils for the artist designing the characters for the game to use. The emphasis on “knowing the tech” strikes me as a another way to ensure that women, POC, the debilitated, and the very young or old, are not part of the dominant game-world.Not to say that any of us can’t be techy, If being techy is such a determining signifier and enforcer of hegemony, why would any of us want to? And what would we do instead? Simply recapitulating the status quo through using tools determined by it is not a critical stance. but to ensure that techyness is something dominated by white, cis, 20-30 year old men. Not entirely to their benefit: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] VII: free speech and its ends
The state prosecuting people for what they post on Facebook is a matter of free speech. An admin banning someone who disrupts a mailing list is not. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] screens
On 07/07/2012 08:11 PM, Kriss Ravetto wrote:
You mean cinema is no longer persuasive, what about TV broadcast news and
opinion?
I can get both on my computer('s screen).
- Rob.
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Re: [-empyre-] screens
On 07/06/2012 02:16 PM, Simon Biggs wrote: With the death of Flash it's not just the vector based screen on its way out (that's been on the way out ever since Evans and Sutherland invented the framestore at the start of the 1970's) but also vector based graphics (or at least one commercial application). Flash isn't needed for vector graphics on the web, though. Even if we don't use SVG, the html5 canvas tag supports all the usual vector graphics operations, and there are JavaScript libraries to support this: http://raphaeljs.com/ http://d3js.org/ http://calebevans.me/projects/jcanvas/index.php - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Week 4 - Bio/Nano/Materialisms - the transperversal aesthetic of Texas grasshoppers
On 06/29/2012 06:43 PM, rrdominguez2 wrote: Particle Capitalism! Particle Capitalism! Doing whatever particle capitalism can. Bits and atoms. And pennies... - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman
On 06/28/2012 05:56 AM, Timothy Morton wrote: Lots of artists and musicians are now tuning into OOO. Yes Ian's book contains some interesting examples. The problem is that the defenses of OOO against charges of failing to illustrate Marxism indicate that OOO aesthetics is probably a category error as well. You wrote: The object in itself being accessible as simply the sum of its unique (fnarr) aesthetic properties valenced in terms of their efficacy at reflecting the ego of the gentlemanly spectator is a vision of OOO that would cause its proponents to clop furiously. That's almost the opposite I'm afraid. It *wouldn't* cause them to? ;-) Back to the lab! http://www.famousmonstersoffilmland.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sjff_01_img0077.jpg - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman
On 06/27/2012 11:07 AM, Robert Jackson wrote: Hi All, It's worth noting that Kosuth was a conceptual artist who explicitly followed in the lineage of Duchamp and the 'demonstration' of idea: that is to say, the conceptual delivery of art as information and the separation of 'art' from 'aesthetics' - (his famous Art Forum essay 'art after philosophy' says as much). Hardly any of these elements chime with the privileging of the discrete object in OOO. The object in itself being accessible as simply the sum of its unique (fnarr) aesthetic properties valenced in terms of their efficacy at reflecting the ego of the gentlemanly spectator is a vision of OOO that would cause its proponents to clop furiously. As Ian mentioned - The fact the OOO is threatening a lot of 40 - 50 year old structuralist-poststructuralist assumptions doesn't stop at philosophy or cultural theory. In the arts - pretty soon we'll start Having been at art school in the early nineties I have very little time for PS but I'm constantly surprised at how different OOO apparently believes its dryly authoritarian poetics are from PS. seeing bigger conflicts between proponents of the Duchamp lineage and whatever manifestation OOO and art happen to collide in. IMO Duchamp has a lot to answer for, especially in the dross of conceptual creative malaise which contemporary art can't get out of. Duchamp is now no Neoconceptualism (80s...) and relationalism (90s...) are in no small part about the pastoral ventriloquization of objects (...commodities or resources, obviously including human resources...). OOO poses no threat to this order, flat ontology is as market friendly (with apologies to everyone who has a sad at the trivial fact of OOO's literal and metaphoric market congruity, which it shares with Theory's identity politics) as suspension of judgement was. It is a managerial Hameau de la Reine. The error of Duchamp's reception by the art (market|world) is to assume that the ontological blasphemy of the creative act is repeatable. Badiou is useful here, or at least fun. longer avantgarde - but what Greenberg accurately described as 'avant gardist'. It's consists not of sincerity but of demonstration - and its expiration date is nigh. Duchamp is exquisitely ironic, introducing negative valences into aesthetics and negative space into the ontology of art. But he was reclaimed by the art market by the 1960s with the editions of his lost readymades. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6261 Besides the inevitable disagreements/agreements on what objects are, or how they relate, I think OOO has brought depth back into the heart of discrete entities, with a realist equivalent twist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman
On 06/14/2012 07:02 PM, Ian Bogost wrote: As for queer and feminist formulations, I agree with the spirit of what you say, but I'll reiterate my observation that SR/OOO is moving in a slightly different direction—one that concerns toasters and quasars as much as human subjects (note the as much as here). Why not take this work for what it is, at least for starters, rather than for what it isn't? The as much as is precisely the problem. Galloway's critique of OOO that Zach mentioned explains why: http://itself.wordpress.com/2012/06/03/a-response-to-graham-harmans-marginalia-on-radical-thinking/ But I wouldn't lump Meillassoux in with Harman. I think Meillassoux's philosophy can indeed be interesting for this debate because of its embracing of contingency and possibility. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] benefits of practice to conventional research / could gamification save academia?
On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:14:43 +0100, Lasse Scherffig wrote: If gamification is to save academia, I think it should be through playing against it (think of speedruns and meta-gaming). Online gamification is usually a way of getting people to do work without monetary reward. And gamification has conceptual problems: http://www.kmjn.org/notes/soviet_gamification.html http://www.selfawaregames.com/2011/11/15/the-failures-of-gamification/ http://blog.learnboost.com/blog/3-reasons-not-to-gamify-education/ But exams and degrees are already gamification of education. And badge-based accreditation of achievement outside the academy is a way of reproducing this. So I think copying the aesthetic of gamification inside the academy would be less of a shift than people might think. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
The same way they do now, largely unsupported by capital. And what of all the workers who currently are supported by capital? Assuming we are talking about the few cultural producers for whom this support is material, their social capital has been shown to be transferrable to new business models very effectively. Unemployment? Pretty harsh outcome for the vast majority of employed cultural workers if capitalism remains, and thus unemployment is a gateway to destitution. Most cultural workers are under-employed and under-paid. Economic studies of musicians and artists demonstrate this. To gain more of them employment and to improve the pay of those who are employed requires strategies that do not benefit capital via big culture directly. Is that what we want? Fewer people to be paid for cultural production? If we want *more* people paid for cultural production then letting go of the illusions of the culture industry and understanding how artists actually make a living rather than berating free culture for failing to reproduce those illusions is a good first step. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] OSW: open source writing in the network
On 11/01/12 14:55, Simon Biggs wrote: One of the first things that strikes me as particular about open source authoring and publishing systems, in relation to the attention economy, is that OS authorship is effectively a model of co-creation, engaging users as producers. If we compare open source (free culture or massively collaborative projects) with proprietary culture is this *statistically* true? I mean will there be more authors in free culture than in proprietary culture all else being equal? It is potentially true, and I think that is enough, but I am curious about the numbers. This could seem to feed directly into the mechanisms that underpin the attention economy model, where active users (prosumers, co-creators, whatever you want to call them) are a requirement of the system. Capital loves volunteers. Totalising schemes hate activity that they have to work to recuperate. Capital is a totalising scheme that loves free research. Oh, I don't know. But I'm not going to cut off my nose to spite capital's face. At the very least this implies that OS authorship is not unproblematic for those who might fear their contribution to something is being made for somebody else's profit. The Anarchists and socialists have not historically picketed copy shops despite the profits that these made from the production of radical literature and flyers. question then is how, in practical terms, you deal with that situation? We deal with this by keeping moving. And by making it only part of a more general project. I know there are licensing and other legal mechanisms for dealing with this - but the law has its limits. I think it's vital to keep the reformist free speech element of Open Source licences separate from the transformative recognition that new organizational and economic forms are urgent. Trying to instrumentalize the former to the latter will not work for reasons that the margins of this book are too narrow to contain. The law has its limits but copyleft ironises the law. While the rule of law applies (applied?), this is useful. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Our missing guest
On 28/07/11 23:36, Simon Biggs wrote: I have just heard that one of discussants for this week, Simon Yuill, has been ill and will be unable to be involved in our discussion. We send our best wishes to Simon and hope he gets well soon. Oh wow. Yes, best wishes to Simon. - Rob. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Wearable Technologies and dresses/bodies in flux
On 24/05/11 17:23, vandyk vandyk wrote: Technology applied to a garment does nothing except turn the garment into technology, Petrochemical dyes and mechanical weaving aside? - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] contesting the netopticon
On 01/23/2011 04:24 PM, marc garrett wrote: There is already a backlash by various groups and individuals critiquing Twitter and Facebook, saying that these social networking facilities/platforms do not connect people but isolate them from reality.A behaviour that has become typical may still express the I think it depends how socially connected one is to start with. For me, any social contact is an improvement over just sitting at home and the internet has been a benefit for me in this respect. But I'm definitely a pathological case. ;-) problems that once caused us to see it as pathological, Sherry Turkle. Social networking under fresh attack as tide of cyber-scepticism sweeps US. http://tinyurl.com/4suzj94 And: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/books/review/Lehrer-t.html Turkle is the latest recanting cyberprophet after Lanier and Rushkoff. I wonder if this is a generational thing, or possibly a class thing - technology is more available than ever to kids and non-academics. The fragmention of cultural and social experience that Turkle and others blame social network users for is part of the successful operation of the netopticon rather than any kind of personal failure on the part of users. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source
On Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:54:37 +, s...@krokodile.co.uk s...@krokodile.co.uk wrote: cynthia/all The logic of open-source seems to work in subsidized environment like academia where they are paid for teaching and perhaps a little research - but external to the academy how would an open-source artist survive ? Outside of the academy very few non-free-culture (non-open-source) artists survive. It's a cliche but its true - the problem is not piracy, it's obscurity. Free culture helps to address that. I can see how the economics of it would work in West, with a false economics of scarcity and with rich patrons investing in art objects - which rather obviously are not open-source objects, but still without these how would the economics work ? Fine art can be free culture without losing its economic value because copies/adaptations will not affect the originality or identity of the original. They will only emphasize and promote it and thereby its desirability to rich patrons (from whatever kind of institution). This makes fine art (autographic art) better placed than mass media (allographic art) such as novels or popular music to benefit from the reputational effects of free culture without losing sales to third party copies. Is that it ? That the art academy supports artists, so that when the few produce art objects for patrons, they in turn then support the generation of ideas for the spectacle ? Art is not necessarily for the people that pay for it. Or is the model something else ? The model is - make your art as you would anyway, make it free culture, use the reputational effects of the criticism, reference and adaptation that this enables to make more of a living more quickly. And support freedom of speech, free expression, academic freedom, and freedom of critique by doing so. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 62, Issue 13
On 12/01/10 16:29, Gerry Coulter wrote: The term critical culture is a telling one. The system has few better friends than critical culture. It's a useful distraction. As is criticising it. etc. - Rob. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
