----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Thank you, Ricardo. as also evidenced by the posts of Richard and Rahul this week, it's the nuanced approach to social media of activist artists and organizers that we have hoped to hear about this week. What you have taught us over the years is how one miight shift platforms of art and protest in response to fluctuating expressions and manifestations of power, Thanks so much. timp
Sent from my iPhone > On Dec 12, 2014, at 9:15 AM, Ricardo Dominguez <rrdoming...@ucsd.edu> wrote: > > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- > Hola Tod@s and David, > > While the research and scholarship you present is extremely important to > consider > and to understand. It also assumes that artists and activist have no > critical awareness of these issues of power above all things or below all > things (of algorithms or robots), and I think this wrong. At least for me > since my days (80's) with Critical Art Ensemble, ACT UP, and spending our > days and nights reading Adorno to Virillio, from the Pentagon Papers to > the SCUM. Manifesto, working with the Zapatistas and Electronic > Disturbance Theater in the 1990's and now under the weight of Cloudy > Empires etc., - we have never been utopian about technology or imagined > the power and computing in the 20th century would be or become platforms > of justice or concern. But we also did not want to fall into the no-way > out zone of the apocalyptic-that seems to some degree at play in your > scholarship. > > And I would add that this critical stance allowed us to continue to > consider the importance of being in as artivist in support of social > justice causes (of being advertisement or the platforms of concern) who > would use whatever means to do it-including current expressions of the > technological. > > Finally, a number of artivist and activist are investigating type exodus > protocols to > become what Max Headroom called "blanks." > > Thanks for all your research links and pushing us to consider other types of > powers-without-concern. > > Best, > Ricardo > > >> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- >> On December 10, 2014 at 11:37:36 AM, David Golumbia (dgolum...@gmail.com) >> wrote: >> power does not know social justice, however we construe that term. it is >> just power. >> On December 10, 2014 at 11:37:36 AM, David Golumbia (dgolum...@gmail.com) >> wrote: >> >> it is everywhere in the scholarship on social media in particular: "I'm >> going to look exclusively at the thing I consider good and how social >> media contributes to it, and put aside any consideration of the things I >> consider bad." That's not scholarship: it's advertising. >> Power does not know social justice and neither does algorithm or robot. >> Rather, now, the power of Big Software - more or less explicitly >> overdetermined by venal human desire - constructs systems of >> algorithmically driven robots in its service. The robots are reactive and >> generative in the sense that they react to symbolically structured >> cultural forms and then generate (more from less) cultural forms which are >> fed back to human subjects and also to other robots and systems. >> >> Big Software now builds these networked computational systems chiefly and >> massively to render commerce (not art or politics or culture or anything >> else except perhaps the flourishes of 'entertainment media') as >> frictionless as possible: by facilitating real tractions (between capital >> and its (co-)subjects) and by advertising hyper-effectively on behalf of >> capital. Big Software - McKenzie Wark's vectoralists - must make their >> income by charging capital for 'services.' But they have also discovered >> (and I will only briefly touch on this real, historical injustice) that >> they are easily able to steal Big Data from people everywhere merely as an >> unregulated function of the self-stated 'terms' of 'use' for these >> 'services'. >> >> Social Media is perhaps the most important manifestation of this pathology >> of sociopolitical economy. >> >> In so far as we may no longer be able to 'build our own' systems of social >> media, and in so far as the algorithms and robots of real existing social >> media are designed by and in the service of this pathology, I believe that >> there is an argument against Social Media as we know it. Social Media - in >> the form of robots and algorithms - will tend, inevitably, to generate >> more and more in the way of pathological cultural forms addressed to human >> subjects, regardless of those subjects intentions in terms of social >> justice or its opposite or anything else. >> >> And this is quite apart from the historical fact of Big Data theft and >> accumulation that is routinely and tacitly accepted as a function of the >> pathology - our contemporary pharmakon as Bernard Stiegler has it - with >> and within which we must try to live. The uses and values of all that >> 'data' (and it's not really data anyway, its only everything that our >> devices can so far collect) are all but entirely beyond democratic >> control, let alone beyond our control as individuals or progressive >> institutions/collectives. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> empyre forum >> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au >> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu > > > -- > Ricardo Dominguez > Associate Professor > > Visual Arts Department, UCSD > http://visarts.ucsd.edu/ > Principal Investigator, CALIT2 > http://bang.transreal.org/ > > email: rrdoming...@ucsd.edu > _______________________________________________ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
