Entities of code and rules are incorruptible and infallible (so it is said), they are not subject to distortive interventions by debased human institutions. They have no soul, it is true, but they also do not weigh on ours. They are Spirographs, not Stormbringer. The blockchain's metronymic, reified, transactional model of human relations is meant to free us from deceit and usury. We are already homeostats in socioeconomic networks whose restrictions we notice about as much as a fish notices water. Code at least makes this explicit. Plantoid is a way of paying for the creation and exhibition of art - a difficult and worthwhile problem - in a creative way. If it is too successful it will end up as the economic-aesthetic equivalent of grey goo. The anthropocene desert will be filled not with triffids but with plantoids and the artisans hired by their code to create their offspring. Maybe these offspring will mutate into relational artworks that choreograph decorative humanity into their schemes, multitudes that dance and sway in time to Lananotation representations of block hashes while wishing that they hadn't opposed UBI quite so vehemently. Or perhaps plantoids are simply oases in the contemporary desert of the real, depicting something of the moment we find ourselves in between financial crises. Some of the real plants are in Terra0...
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017, at 12:28 PM, Edward Picot wrote: > Annie, > I love this response! - and I think you've really latched onto > something here. '*Being made of code and rules is not the same as** > having a soul... **Plantoid seems to be conservative, reinforcing the > characteristics it** started with...' *There's a real sense of > claustrophobia and frustration about some of the Blockchain-based > artworks, unquestionably brilliant though they are, in that although > they seem to be offering a commentary on the shortcomings and > limitations of the Blockchain, they seem at the same time to be > binding us to those shortcomings and limitations, freezing us into > that world, suggesting that we are all going to be subject to this new > version of reality and unable to escape from it. Yes, this stuff is > creeping into every aspect of our culture. Yes, we are all going to be > touched by it and influenced by it, directed by it, shaped by it, just > as we are by capitalism, mass marketing and mass media. But no, it > doesn't define us or completely contain us. We can still be human in > spite of it. At least I hope we can: and I hope that along with > Blockchain art and the like, we can still have an art that celebrates > and explores the bits of existence that the Blockchain and the like > can't comprehend. Beyond the plantoids there are still real plants.> Edward > > _________________________________________________ > NetBehaviour mailing list > NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org > http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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