It really is a fantastic book Marc, the fruit of many years of labour. I’ve just recommended it to some German curators and academics working in the field of media arts / digitalisation / sustainability and will keep plugging it over here!
I’ve really enjoyed seeing quotes and interviews popping up on Twitter etc. I think it’ll be one of those books that is a slow-burner, gradually attracting more attention until it becomes a classic. And that distinctive cover of Carla’s work really helps! ;) Congratulations again and thank you. <3 Warmly, Gretta > On 29. Sep 2022, at 13:11, marc.garrett via NetBehaviour > <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote: > > Hi Max, > > I'm grateful for you writing your own perspectives about the book on the > list. It really helps open up some of the reasonings being explored in it. > > But also, I agree with you about having that distance of time to look at > Shelley's circumstances, the society then, revolutions, radicalness etc, and > looking at how things are now in comparison. For me, by looking at > Frankenstein and Shelley, it really helped open the conversations that needed > to happen. One of the main reasons for this, is so we were not purely caught > up in jargon, theory, tech or art speak, as the main intellectual currency of > communication. Of course, some of the terms around the tech being looked at > had their own > > More than ever I feel we need to move beyond our chosen, intellectual silos > if we wish to change society, or at least connect with others in ways which > are not isolationist. And yes, I know that people do not intend to create the > conditions of isolation. However, now is the time for us to work harder at > connecting up in ways which are contrary to the dominant narratives of > 'control and divide, demolish'. > > I'm not sure if my suspicions have any real grounding here, and I 'hope' it > doesn't, and that those in the upper echelons of the media art world > contradict my suspicions. But, I suspect they will struggle to allow such a > book to be heard in their conferences, festivals and educational > environments, even though I'd say this book is essential for students and the > wider context of the media art world. The clever thing about this book, is > that it's clever enough to move beyond these fields of practice whilst > including media art ideas and it's amazing artistry; but, at the same time, > it may limit its appeal to those wanting historical, technological and > political references to remain only within 'new' media art frameworks, thus, > reflecting elite peer groups. > > We'll see how it goes. I'm happy with the book and think all those in it are > brilliant. In fact, if I had the money I'd do more exhibitions on the subject > and include more people, and create a part 2 of the book reflecting this > continuing expansion, because, the stories are so vital. > > Wishing you well. > > Marc > > > =============> > > DR Marc Garrett - https://marcgarrett.org/ <https://marcgarrett.org/> > Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/> > DECAL - http://decal.is/ <http://decal.is/> > Bio - https://marcgarrett.org/bio/ <https://marcgarrett.org/bio/>CV - > https://marcgarrett.org/cv/ <https://marcgarrett.org/cv/> <http://decal.is/> > <http://decal.is/> > > Sent with Proton Mail <https://proton.me/> secure email. > > ------- Original Message ------- > On Wednesday, September 28th, 2022 at 18:44, Max Herman via NetBehaviour > <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote: > >> Hi Marc, >> >> I just got my copy of the book last week and have started reading it. Great >> to see so many on the list represented! >> >> For now I've just read the intro and conclusion, and skimmed the images and >> chapters, because of the different "eye" and vocabulary I'm using for >> current work in progress. One impression I got reading the book is how >> technology gets into your head pretty firmly just by asking the question >> "what is it?" Not why do I want it, how will it help, not where does it fit >> into my own situation and the big picture too, etc., but simply what is the >> function? What is this weird thing that does something though I can't see >> or know what that is yet? Everything but the presumably new and powerful >> object is blanked out, in a real sense our "us" is even blanked out >> temporarily, so we're always at a disadvantage while that enigma is in play. >> Every tech commercial says "check out this new feature/product/function," >> often quite ridiculously but always like an earnest yet hip parent or >> teacher. We think we need to know, or are being innocuously informed, but >> even merely visualizing and verbalizing the mechanism is the hook. (Plus >> anxiety of influence. 🙂) >> >> The book is also very dense, concentrated, perhaps like a pill? Like the >> cover image the text is full of myriad detail and highly charged particles. >> Of course this is all part of the theme and the reality too so it certainly >> works. Indeed, how could assembling so many people and works on such a >> topic not be somewhat terrifying and monstrous? Apropos of which I like the >> little after-words of warning and the final image -- Friend? Foe? Some of >> each? >> >> The literary references are much more peaceable and home-spun for me. My >> current project does not reference The Modern Prometheus but does include >> Ovid, Milton, some Percy Shelley, a bit of Aeschylus, and so on. The >> projects blending in some "literature" or writing from a somewhat-distant >> person or time appealed to me on cursory overview, perhaps a bit like the >> cover art's early modern connections. I generally recoil, and let myself do >> so, from images, concepts, or maps which allow no part of the stories and >> words I seem to need. >> >> Also interesting from my particular, somewhat odd current view are the >> collection's weaving and cloth elements. These are not the earliest >> technology, following some time after clubs and hand-axes, but differ >> interestingly (perhaps because they are machine-like yet imitate human >> form?). Textiles span a very long time period, thus signifying much >> especially when expanded to include computers as the book does in a few >> places. Your interview mentions plague DNA being added to a fabric in one >> featured artwork, and there are also images added to cloth in at least one >> case in the book. And really, aside from the highwaters, green skin, and >> neck-bolts what is more to the point than the stiches keeping our >> protagonist's flat skull-top and very hands attached? >> >> One aversion I have (especially during work in progress) is theory-speak, >> and the book shows admirable hesitance therein without going overboard in >> the other extreme. The doing and the making as emphasis I like, the being >> really, and the non-doctrinaire skepticism, since theory may itself be >> another instrument which has "gone monstrous" over the last say 25 (or 50 or >> 150) years. Or has it been ebbing too? Yes there is critique in the book >> but rather than prescriptive explanation by new or specialized terminology >> avalanching after it the assemblage, chapters and intro, seems to say >> "wait." I do think this is important and the reference to Thich Nhat Hahn >> is one refreshing example. Theory as specialist language designed to >> dissect and dominate natural phenomena, thereby establishing compartmented >> professions ad infinitum and institutionalizing many dysfunctions, is still >> a problem for our modern world. >> >> Currently being focused on a certain early modern portrait the theme and >> metaphor of human faces also resonate for me. I'm doing some portraiture >> myself just for ballast and not doing it very well I've had to learn to see >> what's good or useful in mostly imperfect images. This I have noticed >> involves a certain mirroring or even dialogue on my own part, such as >> smiling or frowning slightly at an image, or looking at one section or area >> more than others while unfocused parts blur, shrink, or disappear. Words of >> course are also happening, sometimes amorphously, while this seeing process >> goes on and so my own "face" gets involuted with the one I'm looking at or >> trying to imagine. The book seems to know this terrain well and closely >> grapple with how to navigate it. >> >> A quote that resonates strongly for me with all this is the following about >> monsters from my present topic of study in the Italian Renaissance. I >> started off thinking of this period as "the brand new start of everything" >> but now I realize how much an age of collapse, despair, and desolation it >> was (or is). There's something of this in Bosch's Delights, say, painted >> the same year as the Mona Lisa or close to it, but in many more places too. >> I'd even hazard to say the Renaissance saw dystopian modernity much as we >> do, though from the "before" side perhaps, their direct vision of past >> poverty and brutality providing antithesis to the optimist clangor much like >> our apprehension of the future's does now. There's an arc so to say worth >> contemplating, maybe, and Shelley's novel is a very apt guide or evocative >> stranger somewhere along its middle promenade I do agree. >> >> "Animals will be seen on the earth who will always be fighting against each >> other with the greatest loss and frequent deaths on each side. And there >> will be no end to their malignity; by their strong limbs we shall see a >> great portion of the trees of the vast forests laid low throughout the >> universe; and, when they are filled with food the satisfaction of their >> desires will be to deal death and grief and labour and wars and fury to >> every living thing; and from their immoderate pride they will desire to rise >> towards heaven, but the too great weight of their limbs will keep them down. >> Nothing will remain on earth, or under the earth or in the waters which will >> not be persecuted, disturbed and spoiled, and those of one country removed >> into another. And their bodies will become the sepulture and means of >> transit of all they have killed. >> O Earth! why dost thou not open and engulf them in the fissures of thy vast >> abyss and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven such a cruel >> and horrible monster." >> >> "Of the Cruelty of Man" >> >> How to respond, what to try to do when the technology has gotten into the >> animal and monstrosity prevails, was the question then too, as now, but what >> was their answer? Something also like ours, and the book's: no magic word, >> no instant antidote, but a mix of survival, improvisation, metamorphoses, >> and attempted transits from worse to better. Many panaceas being presented >> to us now were in early stages then, and already understood to be false by >> some with clear imagination, so they don't have anything like an easy fix >> (these counterparts, I mean). The images I see in use back then do include >> occasional metaphors, discreetly mingled into the mix among others, of >> garments and bridges. One such is Giorgione's The Tempest, like the Garden >> and Joconde dated c. 1505 and perhaps the first landscape painting of all, >> almost universally considered indecipherable (though this could change) and >> reportedly Byron's favorite painting. Another is that artist's The Sunset >> with its strange creatures crawling out of the river. >> >> Your sentence in a previous post and the interview is also right on target: >> "It is a web of confusing and complex experiences and emerging pieces of >> knowledge that always requires constant attention." Experience, one network >> feature not convincingly attributed to machines yet (and maybe ever as the >> book helpfully asserts in re Lanier and Kurzweil), was another major >> heuristic for early moderns. It meant both cognition and experiment in >> Latin, and carried forward those meanings with remarkable continuity for >> artist-scientists from the ancients through medievals like Ockham and Roger >> Bacon, thence to Dante and Leonardo, even reaching more-moderns like Blake >> and Calvino. It is far from irrelevant today, and I look forward to hearing >> more and finishing the book soon. >> >> All best regards and thanks for the timely and ambitious work! >> >> Max >> >> >> From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org> on behalf >> of marc.garrett via NetBehaviour <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> >> Sent: Monday, September 26, 2022 5:26 AM >> To: M F <mnfin...@gmail.com> >> Cc: marc.garrett <marc.garr...@protonmail.com>; NetBehaviour for networked >> distributed creativity <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> >> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] First review of Frankenstein Reanimated :-) >> >> Hi Meredith, >> >> >What a thoughtful and thorough review I look forward to reading the book... >> >> My thoughts exactly, it's lovely that someone has spent time to seriously >> and respectfully think about the content and themes being examined in the >> book, and genuinely express their own reasonings in words about it all from >> their own perspective. >> >> It has an extra resonance for me because he's not directly involved in media >> art culture, as he mentions. What also matters is that, it's not a macho >> review, no competitive snarling like on Nettime, which I sadly seems full of >> angry men having a go at each other - I don't want to be like that, it's all >> to built around combative and not building alternatives because people are >> caught in institutional silos shouting out of them at each other in >> frustration. This however, feels very real and emancipatory because it's >> outside of that construct. >> >> Wishing you well >> >> Marc >> >> =============> >> >> DR Marc Garrett - https://marcgarrett.org/ <https://marcgarrett.org/> >> Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/> >> DECAL - http://decal.is/ <http://decal.is/> >> Bio - https://marcgarrett.org/bio/ <https://marcgarrett.org/bio/>CV - >> https://marcgarrett.org/cv/ <https://marcgarrett.org/cv/> <http://decal.is/> >> <http://decal.is/> >> >> Sent with Proton Mail <https://proton.me/> secure email. >> >> ------- Original Message ------- >> On Saturday, September 3rd, 2022 at 15:14, M F <mnfin...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> What a thoughtful and thorough review - >>> I look forward to reading the book >>> Warmly >>> Meredith >>> >>> On Sat, Sep 3, 2022 at 7:08 AM marc.garrett via NetBehaviour >>> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org >>> <mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>> wrote: >>> Hi all, >>> >>> Just saw a review of Frankenstein Reanimated and because some of you on the >>> list are in the book I thought you'd be interested in reading it. >>> >>> Mytho recommends (Phil Smith): >>> >>> Frankenstein Reanimated: Creation & Technology in the 21st Century (Eds. >>> Marc Garrett & Yiannis Colakides) Torque Editions, 2022 >>> https://www.facebook.com/mythogeography/posts/5907704932592518 >>> <https://www.facebook.com/mythogeography/posts/5907704932592518> >>> >>> This has been a very strange read for me. I have no attraction to or >>> understanding of the technical side of programming. I read Erik Davis’s >>> ‘TechGnosis’ back in 1998 when it first came out and, already anti-gnostic >>> and anti-transcendentalist, my suspicions about an information-based >>> society were heightened. I have pretty much remained that way ever since; >>> extending my wariness to information technology-based arts. Perhaps, I just >>> haven’t seen that wonderful piece to change my mind, though even one of the >>> artists interviewed in ‘Frankenstein Reanimated’ worries at the “VR >>> Headsets that provide clothes for hackneyed metaphors”. >>> >>> What brought me to read the book is my engagement with Mary Shelley’s novel >>> ‘Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus’, co-writing a stage adaptation >>> (which also drew on the Universal movies) back in 2005, which has continued >>> to tour intermittently ever since and was last year turned into a musical >>> at the Deutsches Theater in Munich. The early parts of ‘Frankenstein >>> Re-Animated’ address the abiding significance of the novel in some detail, >>> and then the interviews with various ‘media artists’ take over – a monster >>> taking control of its own life – and the book moves further away from Mary >>> Shelley and her engagement with stitching flesh and sparking philosophy in >>> dead brain matter. >>> In his preface, Yiannis Colakides describes “a widening knowledge-gap in >>> the use and understanding of technologies” between hackers who operate as a >>> “vectoralist class.... [who] control.... information flows; and the >>> majority who are all too often taken for a ride by their technologies”. It >>> is this problematic relationship that seems to haunt – as Mary Shelley’s >>> monster plagues its creator, asking difficult questions and exacting >>> revenge – the artworks that ‘Frankenstein Reanimated’ describes and >>> discusses. In the vast majority of the examples – drawn from exhibitions in >>> Gíjon, London and Limassol – the technologies are deployed to critique and >>> even undo themselves; many draw on what Marc Garrett describes as the >>> effects of the new technologies to “have profoundly displaced and decentred >>> how we understand humans and humanity’s agency and corporality” in order to >>> explore those displacements and decentrings in what Gregory Sholette and >>> Olga Kopenkina call the “capitalist-realist... un-present”. >>> >>> Artworks explore the “potential harm of recognition technology”, how >>> technology carries racial assumptions as ‘universals’; gallery visitors are >>> drawn into making and choosing assumptions for image filtration. But when >>> an artist says “What is amazing to me.... is that people really get into >>> labelling each other” you want to shout back – ‘but that is what your >>> artwork asks them to do!’ Rather like the options in Luke Rhinehart’s >>> (George Cockcroft’s) ‘The Dice Man’ (1971) or Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0 >>> (1974) – why are the options of sexual assault, a bullet and a gun, even in >>> there? There is an inbuilt manipulation that looks like choice or agency; >>> an implication and incorporation that is within the very structures and >>> techniques of the works that both address their themes in critique and >>> enact them simultaneously. It is jaw-dropping to read an artist who first >>> explains their work as “inspired.... by reading... about the autonomous >>> weapons systems... which... ‘conflate the act of seeing and killing’” and >>> then, on being asked to explain why the “visual universe” of their piece is >>> “so cold and clean”, replies that it is “just a pragmatic choice.... >>> everything that I am not trying to point to is at default value”. >>> >>> But wasn’t Mary Shelley starting with a default value, with a dismembered >>> body/bodies, bringing the default of the graveyard to life and not only >>> asking questions of it, but having it ask questions of everything. Pushing >>> the new technologies beyond their functional limits often has intriguing >>> and attention-grabbing effects, distorting figures and landscapes in ways >>> reminiscent of historical and contemporary human artists, but then the >>> suspicion is all the time that these effects are the remnants of the art >>> history education of the programmers rather than any novel interruption of >>> productions of the obvious. It is disheartening to read an artist bemoan >>> “the pre-existing bias of my initial dataset... The results may have been >>> further distorted by technical bias due to technical constraints of the >>> algorithm”. As artist Mary Flanagan says, almost in despair: “I keep >>> wondering why we are on this quest to make artificial systems emotive.... >>> why we invent things just to invent them, thinking that somehow anything >>> new improves our lives”. And yet the artworks keep on coming as each new >>> wave of artists ‘discovers’ the possibilities of (and funding for) arts and >>> new technologies. >>> >>> If I came away with a slightly refined animosity, I would not want to >>> discourage anyone from reading this book; it is endlessly fascinating. It >>> never flinches from the difficulty of this work and the mind-bending >>> tangles that contort the artists working with it, often in interfaces with >>> terrifying state and fiscal systems. Paul Vanousse’s article (he was >>> investigated by the FBI who attempted to enter his studio and home, two of >>> his previous collaborators were prosecuted) is a welcome reminder of just >>> how dangerous some of these themes/threats can be. >>> >>> ‘Frankenstein Reanimated’ is perhaps most powerful and engaging when it >>> addresses the technology not as a “tool” or an expansion of the artists’ >>> themes, but as an agency in itself: “a growing chorus of techno-objects >>> that insistently asks us to drill the Arctic, build pipelines, burn coal” >>> (Eugenio Tisselli). The “monster” does not feed us, it wants us to feed it, >>> otherwise, it threatens, it will takes its revenge; those who serve and >>> obey it can participate in its feeding frenzy “where the secret sauce of >>> memetic media meets the magic sauce of right-wing billionaires, >>> underwriting political campaigns to facilitate a wholesale move to the hard >>> right” (Ami Clarke). But as Mary Flanagan says: “why are we on this quest?” >>> >>> Anyone interested in a copy go here - >>> https://torquetorque.net/publications/frankenstein-reanimated/ >>> <https://torquetorque.net/publications/frankenstein-reanimated/> >>> >>> >>> >>> Wishing you well >>> >>> Marc >>> >>> =============> >>> >>> DR Marc Garrett - https://marcgarrett.org/ <https://marcgarrett.org/> >>> Furtherfield - http://www.furtherfield.org <http://www.furtherfield.org/> >>> DECAL - http://decal.is/ <http://decal.is/> >>> Bio - https://marcgarrett.org/bio/ <https://marcgarrett.org/bio/>CV - >>> https://marcgarrett.org/cv/ <https://marcgarrett.org/cv/> <http://decal.is/> >>> <http://decal.is/> >>> >>> Sent with Proton Mail <https://proton.me/> secure email. >>> _______________________________________________ >>> NetBehaviour mailing list >>> NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org >>> <mailto:NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org> >>> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >>> <https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour> >> > > _______________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org > https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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