[NetBehaviour] ganglia, networ
ganglia, networ http://www.alansondheim.org/quantum1.png https://youtu.be/xaDhGCuaMEY http://www.alansondheim.org/quantum2.png http://www.alansondheim.org/quantum3.png two performers go to the floor; a single avatar body distributed between them. the performers move around each other, closer and farther; the avatar body 'coagulates' and 'dissolves.' the real bodies are indicated by white dots, the motion capture markers; the colored bars and forms are the machinery of the software. one can easily imagine animal consciousness distributed among neural ganglia (think of crayfish for example); coherency and totalization is an emergent and constantly-forming process. here motion capture is at the service of independent performers and what we see is a rough gestalt as a third party attempts sense from their movement. so what emerges at times is a singularity, as if there were an uncanny quantum mechanics at work, producing the illusion of one from many. think termites, think flocks of birds, think splatter semiotics. here, here is somewhat there, and what is somewhat there, is here. the embedded singularity we apply to humans - _the_ mind, _the_ body, _the_ person, _the_ gender - is problematized from the start. think microbiome, and begin and end with that - not "either A or B" but a form of "neither A nor B" that opens up domains, presents structures and ghosts and ghosts of structures that --- Jakeia Lorree, performer, conceptions Louis Wells, performer, facilitator, conceptions Augustus Wendell, motion capture, conceptions Alan Sondheim, motion capture, conceptions Azure Carter, facilitator, conceptions Andrew Klobucar, facilitator STEM+ Residency sponsorship New Jersey Institute of Technology ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
[NetBehaviour] Szpakowski/Sondheim exchange #1
Hi all with Alan's permission ( indeed encouragement!) I'm forwarding an exchange we had about my art and knowledge piece, posted here and accessible to... er... *some* :https://rdcu.be/7BPg ( Wiley helpfully got in touch to say that they're 'working on' the fact that whether their read only version works is dependent upon 'device and browser.' FFS!) If anyone did want to see it and can't get to it through the Wiley link give me a shout and I'll sort something.Anyway, this the first of three: - Forwarded Message - From: Alan Sondheim To: Michael Szpakowski Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2018 2:52 PM Subject: Re: your article!, response Hi Michael, I read your article, far too quickly; I'm short of time, I do have some comments about it, and I wonder if there is something about quoting Ryle, etc. that speaks to British thought; I tend to work more out of deconstruction, and people like Alphonso Lingis for example. I'm not sure what research is, what knowledge is, for example. I wouldn't use those terms. I'd turn more towards Mikel Dufrenne who, in his phenomenology of the novel, talks about the world of the book, which relates to diegesis on one hand - that might relate to your knowledge-with, and I think an irreducible on the other. I've also used Bourdieu's Distinction, which talks about artworlds and their relation to the social, and I think of art especially, through Foucault, as a discursive formation - the object or process or performance, the focus in a sense or punctum or plateau - is only part of a discourse which us all over the place, sloppy - for example imitations and influences on other artists, precedents, reviews, angry looks, appreciations, idle talk in and out of the gallery if there is a gallery, etc. I think it deeply resists definition (for example of _any_ sort of knowledge-x) and instead might be considered in terms of tendencies, gatherings, plateaus, those discursive formations, idiolects, and so forth. This to me is where the energy and resistance and value lies, in its incapacity for fundamental (ontological, epistemological) focusing, its doing of something, anything, including indefinable fields, its insistence, in a sense, on a problematic which at its very core is irreducible. Even art "research" - or maybe especially art "research" is a trap, just as for me "experimental" is a trap; art is a doing which may or may not participate in research one way or another. And art as increasing knowledge? How is this conceivably defined? Even in mathematics - does coming up with a newer largest prime really increase knowledge? I do think on the other hand, the sciences are vastly different, and that difference lies in the difficult ontology and epistemology of mathematics, and mathesis in relation to experiment. I think hard knowledge does result out of this, and on a low level, technology is the result. Understanding the workings of a neutron star (which are far more complicated than I thought) is a good example - there is no way humans can approach one (for that matter, can we approach an atom? a quark? certainly not a neutrino - you see where this is going), but we can begin to understand the unbelievaly 'foreign' (to us) dynamics of the star through a combination of distant observation and mathematical modeling. For me, I've always felt that science is "that thing" or process among any others that has an uncanny relationship to fundamental truths about the world. Finally, I think that identity politics and their instantiation in works of art definitely gives background and depth to your deployment of knowledge-with; this has to do with, among other things, who the "with" are, what sort of social is implied, and so forth. And here art supplies a didactic function that is almost uncanny; it relates for me to mirroring and mirror neurons between one and another body, between and among bodies, and the problematic, critique, and celebration of that... If you think it's useful, please send this on to the netbehaviour list; I wanted to send it directly to you, of course. Best, Alan, hope it's a bit useful. - -- =directory http://www.alansondheim.org tel 718-813-3285 email sondheim ut panix.com, sondheim ut gmail.com = ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
[NetBehaviour] Sondheim/Szpakowski exchange #2
2 of 3 - Forwarded Message - From: michael szpakowski To: Alan Sondheim Sent: Friday, October 5, 2018 8:58 PM Hi Alan I very much enjoyed your measured and thoughtful response. I found myself agreeing with a number of the things you said. I think my main difference with you is that I need to emphasise that the piece has its roots in polemic. Rather as I think you suggest, if it was me who was starting I wouldn't necessarily start from the assumption that art needs to be framed as research or even as somehow knowledge producing. That starting point arises out of the supine (and lazy) acquiescence of many in the academy with the distortions that its funding model and the incursion of the corporate sphere create in it. Rather than confronting that elephant in the room they use their skills to in a sense normalise the situation by spinning webs of confusion around the topic as if there is something somehow inevitable about it and it arises from some sound theoretical basis. Because these folk tend to be deft with words ( and also because even academics need to eat) this often goes unremarked and unchallenged. I took this problem as my starting point. Though I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the emergence in my thinking of knowledge-with which again I emphasise I believe to be a real thing... That said I wanted to comment on a few things you say -mostly in agreement. (1) Your point about Ryle and your recourse to different traditions -I take. I think of it as us maybe speaking different dialects of a common language. I suppose because I was trying to bring out some fairly basic logical contradictions in the positions of others this led me on a road which favoured someone one might characterise as more from the analytic than continental philosophical tradition. Although, as with Wittgenstein, sometimes also stowed in that box, Ryle is a much richer and flavoursome and earthy thinker than many of the dull logic choppers who form the larger cohort of the analytic tradition.(2) I love your 'discursive formation' onwards. I've written very much to that effect myself elsewhere of art as something embedded into the social, into discourse, where artworks have fuzzy borders spreading over into news, criticism, remixes, parodies and even jokes. I'm not sure that this understanding of the penumbra of the artwork is inimical to what I write in the piece -indeed it seems to me that this social and performative aspect could well form part of the mechanism which generates 'knowledge-with'(3) I'm not sure that your discussion of science/maths really fleshes out any differences between us - I tend to think maths for example is one of the few things that does generate something approaching a pure 'knowledge-that' in the sense of 'true facts about the world'. I think lots of ( but by no means all) knowledge elsewhere *is* problematic. I think I say this in various ways in the piece (4) Your last paragraph expresses in a lyrical and exuberant way something I have no problem at all with. In my more dour way, I think, it's again the sort of thing ( or at least it sits next door to it, in a non oppositional way) I was trying to get at... I really grateful to you for responding. The piece was meant as the beginning of a discussion. I hope others might take it up too. with my warmest wishesMichael From: Alan Sondheim To: Michael Szpakowski ; Michael Szpakowski Sent: Wednesday, October 3, 2018 5:12 AM Subject: your article!, response Hi Michael, I read your article, far too quickly; I'm short of time, I do have some comments about it, and I wonder if there is something about quoting Ryle, etc. that speaks to British thought; I tend to work more out of deconstruction, and people like Alphonso Lingis for example. I'm not sure what research is, what knowledge is, for example. I wouldn't use those terms. I'd turn more towards Mikel Dufrenne who, in his phenomenology of the novel, talks about the world of the book, which relates to diegesis on one hand - that might relate to your knowledge-with, and I think an irreducible on the other. I've also used Bourdieu's Distinction, which talks about artworlds and their relation to the social, and I think of art especially, through Foucault, as a discursive formation - the object or process or performance, the focus in a sense or punctum or plateau - is only part of a discourse which us all over the place, sloppy - for example imitations and influences on other artists, precedents, reviews, angry looks, appreciations, idle talk in and out of the gallery if there is a gallery, etc. I think it deeply resists definition (for example of _any_ sort of knowledge-x) and instead might be considered in terms of tendencies, gatherings, plateaus, those discursive formations, idiolects, and so forth. This to me is where the energy and resistance and value lies, in its incapacity for fundamental (ontological,
[NetBehaviour] Szpakowski /Sondheim exchange #3
3 of 3 - Forwarded Message - From: Alan Sondheim To: michael szpakowski Sent: Saturday, October 6, 2018 1:31 AM Subject: Re: my reply to you :) Hi Michael, I do think we're fairly in agreement. Re: Wittgenstein, he's someone for all seasons, his own work a language-game. ___ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour