Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Eduardo Navas]

Dear Ian,

Perhaps the irony of your comment and critical position between conceptual
art and OOO is that you appear to do to conceptual art what you claim Simon
and others are doing to OOO.  I would suggest that if you are to dismiss
conceptualism as you have been doing in the last few posts that you also put
the time in understanding the history of conceptual art and its importance.
Or at least be more respectful of a field that is clearly not your
specialization, and learn something from others in the process.

Anyone who has spent enough time studying the history of contemporary art is
likely to be skeptical of your comments on conceptualsim just like you are
of other people¹s questioning of OOO who are not as familiar with it as you
are.

I hope the discussion turns more insightful in the next few posts.

Cheers,

Eduardo Navas


On 6/27/12 12:11 PM, "Ian Bogost"  wrote:

> Simon, this conversation is a fool's bargain and I refuse to continue it. You
> suggest that what is worth doing‹but not even doing, just reading, even‹only
> *will have been* worthwhile after enough time has passed that it can be judged
> on the historical scale. This gambit amounts to a rationalist economics for
> intellectual work at best, and a terrorism against it at worst.
> 
> As for OOO, you'd see the links to Latour and Heidegger even more clearly if
> and when you choose read the works that make those connections very
> explicitly. The same is true for its take on toasters. I won't hold my breath.
> 
> Good luck with your conceptual art.
> 
> Ian
> 
> On Jun 27, 2012, at 3:59 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
> 
>> Hi Ian
>> 
>> Maybe I'm a little old, but 10 to 15 years seems, in terms of human thought,
>> extremely recent. I have read some OOO texts though, during that short period
>> of time. I've also had a little time to digest Kosuth's work, since it was
>> made forty odd years ago. In retrospect his chairs might seem a simplistic
>> reading of semiotics but I'd argue there is more to them than that. They're
>> not just about signs and signifiers but also mediality, sociality and the
>> performative. In the 1960's not many artists were addressing those issues.
>> 
>> I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest about popularity, or the value of
>> a lack of it. Seems to me that OOO is popular - even fashionable, like the
>> new aesthetic. I can also see links in OOO to Latour, although more so to
>> Heidegger. Perhaps it is a non-phenomenologist's take on Heidegger? Whatever,
>> it isn't fuzzy. Are things that simple? Can we assume there is some kind of
>> residual and irreducible thinginess in things? A toaster can be an octopus -
>> and whatever it might be, from moment to moment, it is rarely a toaster.
>> 
>> best
>> 
>> Simon
>> 
>> 
>> On 27 Jun 2012, at 00:34, Ian Bogost wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jun 26, 2012, at 3:01 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
>>> 
 But Kosuth's chair engaged the simulacra - it addressed conventional
 notions of the real as not sustainable. Kosuth's chair is an equivocal
 chair, a fuzzy chair, all types of chair - and never a chair. It's a
 conundrum, and that was the point.
>>> 
>>> Kosuth's One and Three Chairs is about language, about semiotics. Like
>>> everything else has been, for so long. The fact that there are chairs, and
>>> there are photographs, and there are words‹this is what interests me. The
>>> fact that conceptual artists can play pranks on the rich benefactors of
>>> museums and galleries is not very interesting to me. It's too bad, because
>>> when enacted, One and Three Chairs actually DOES begin to draw our attention
>>> to things in an appealing way. But not because the real is unsustainable.
>>> Rather, because the real is, well, real.
>>> 
 I admit I've not read much about OOO and am yet to be convinced it is worth
 the effort. I've never been an early adopter - prefer to see the bugs
 ironed out of things, at least for one cycle, before buying the gizmo in
 question (and I'm mean with my money, so most often I never buy).
>>> 
>>> Harman has been writing under the shingle "object-oriented philosophy" since
>>> 1999. His first systematic take, the book Tool-Being, was published in 2002.
>>> That's a decade ago. Countless other books and articles on and peripheral to
>>> OOO have been published in the intervening time. Like it or not, his work
>>> and that of others has had an impact on many fields, even if particularly in
>>> recent years. 
>>> 
>>> If you aren't interested, fine. If you don't want to do the work, fine. But
>>> own up to it. Otherwise, it is too tempting to conclude that you wish only
>>> to adopt the ideas that prove popular, that become fungible among the same
>>> communities for the same purposes.
>>> 
 My initial apprehension of OOO is that it doesn't seek to address the
 ontology of things as things but their relationships with one another.
>>> 
>>> This is precisely the opposite of the main contention of OOO, which holds
>>> tha

Re: [-empyre-] Week 4 - Bio/Nano/Materialisms - the transperversal aesthetic of Texas grasshoppers

[Timothy Morton]

Thanks for this Heather. I too am leery of a 
certain kind of nihilism. Why would (human)
horror be the special pampered affect of our
age?

I think personally, and this has been growing 
on me for a few months, that the at least 
philosophical solution is "underneath" nihilism,
not in spite of it or over it. 

It's a little bit hard to explain in an email but 
one clear symptom is the fascination with and 
disavowal of nothingness in modern philosophy
(ie since 1790). 

This ties in with a fear of a certain kind of Buddhism,
a fear that is isometric with homophobia, being
a fear of physical intimacy with the same(ness)
installed at the core of Western thinking. 

I'm not an apocalyptic person. I think the world
has ended and that this is the afterlife already. 

Namely the Anthropocene, the moment at which
human history intersects with geological time
(incipit 1790). 

Tim


http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

On Jun 27, 2012, at 6:24 PM, Heather Davis  wrote:

> The no-future future is definitely something that lays heavy on me, as a 
> person and as a thinker, especially as it relates to what you call the 
> 'nanocaust' with its differential racial/class distributions over this earth. 
> it seems precisely at the level of the nano that these struggles are being 
> played out, within and outside of our own bodies, other living organisms, the 
> surface of the earth and the composition of water.
> 
> what i have been struggling with for a while is a desire to avoid the kind of 
> nihilism that would lead to a relishing in the terminal capitalism/empire 
> moment we seem to be finding ourselves in. beauty in pure destruction  is at 
> once a driver of social change and its expiration. This tendency, seen within 
> certain strands of SR (I am thinking of Nick Land/Reza Negarestani) has an 
> incredible appeal in its heightening of (nano) intensities, in maintaining 
> destruction as an important political concept, but seems to also slide 
> towards messianic end-of-the-world christian narratives of destruction and 
> perfection. is it possible or desirable to think with this material moment, 
> think with the dying cows, rapidly extinguishing species, without giving over 
> to the pure pleasure of annihilation?  how do we think of the collective as 
> necessarily reaching beyond the human, its transversal ontogenesis that 
> encompasses the object revenge that you speak of (especially in relation to 
> non-living objects, such as chemicals, minerals, polymers, etc.) without 
> falling into a kind of christian rapture of the end times. perhaps this is 
> for me where art and theory provide a kind of breaking point/ambiguity that 
> would enable a different kind of movement. in other words, the 
> anti-anti-utopian position of art (through it's multiple negatives that 
> leaves us where exactly?) provides this kind of useful ambiguity that pushes 
> in the direction of new organisms (such as pinar's or ricardo's poetic 
> nano-interventions)   operate as a magical object, that is, the object that 
> wards off the devil by becoming the devil.
>  
> I really love Pinar's categorization of 'post-natural ecosystems' and Elle's 
> ethno-dysphoric cloning in this regard because this categorization offers a 
> way to acknowledge the destruction of capitalism while refusing the scenario 
> of apocalypse that gives too much weight to figures of origins and certainty. 
> thank you for these interventions.
> heather.
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:57 AM, rrdominguez2  wrote:
> Hola Heather and all,
> 
> The transperversal movement(s) that *particle group* attempts to trace via 
> bio/nano scale(s) gestures may indeed call forth "a kind of material 
> corollary" of affect/effect. Elle's capturing the EEG of "ethno-dysphoric 
> cloning" or Pinar's new organ/ism pass and are passing between the utopian 
> synthetics of particle capitalism(s) and the nanocaust (or the revenge of the 
> object) - an apocalyptic materiality. The bio/nano aesthetic in the above 
> work moves within and around a critical anti-anti-utopian condition of making 
> these engines of imperceptibility visible - transperversal or a type of 
> queering movement.
> 
> But one does not have to look very far into the no-future future or the 
> freeze dried past to see what grey ecology of bio/nano is manifesting via 
> pre-set accidents or trans-effects at the bio/nano scale: 
> 
> Genetically modified grass linked to cattle deaths
> http://wtvr.com/2012/06/24/genetically-modified-grass-linked-to-cattle-deaths/
> 
> Indeed a new materialism transmuting feed grass into poison which now only 
> Texas grasshoppers are enjoying (the transperversal moment).
> 
> As artists we are all Texas grasshoppers - but for how long?
> 
> Very best,
> Ricardo
> 
> 
> 
> On 6/24/12 5:27 PM, Heather Davis wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> Apologies for my tardy arrival. I am so excited to be a part of this 
>> conversation with each of you, and find myself stunned by the 

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Timothy Morton]

Hi Rob,

Lots of artists and musicians are now tuning into OOO.

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. Back to the lab!

Tim


http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

On Jun 27, 2012, at 4:15 PM, Rob Myers  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.
___
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

[pinar yoldas]

Thank you Heather, 
Your question "how do we think of the human reaching beyond the human?" is of 
great importance to me.
I want to quote Elizabeth Grosz here , who is a big influence for me and my 
project . 

"What is distinctively human in the humanities if man is again, in the light of 
Darwin's rearrangement of the universe, placed in the context of animals and 
animal-becomings?
What would the humanities, a knowledge of the posthuman, be like far in the 
future, after mankind has evolved beyond man? " 

"What kind of new understanding of the humanities would it take to adequately 
map this decentering that places man back within the animal, within nature, and 
within a space and time that man does not regulate, understand, or control? 
What new kinds of science does this entail? And what new kinds of art? "

( Grosz, Becoming Undone, p12)

Grosz  emphasizes Darwin's contribution in decentering of the human by placing 
the animal right next to the human , not above, not below. The nihilism Heather 
has pointed out is unavoidable at the moment of no-future future and nanocaust. 
Yet Grosz' approach fills my lungs with fresh , uncontaminated air, and a 
genetically modified desire to create rather than annihilate.
If human is not at the center anymore we can look at future as a pool of animal 
possibilities. I personally strongly believe that the bio-nano realism 
surrounding us can at least pave the way to post-human ecosystems where the 
residues or 'cruft' of capitalism gives birth to new species , species beyond 
capitalism, beyond military and maybe perhaps hopefully beyond religion.


Pinar Yoldas
---
{artist, designer, neuroenthusiast}
---
PhD Student 
Art , Art History and Visual Studies
 Duke University
---
{http://pinaryoldas.info}




On Jun 27, 2012, at 7:24 PM, Heather Davis wrote:

> The no-future future is definitely something that lays heavy on me, as a 
> person and as a thinker, especially as it relates to what you call the 
> 'nanocaust' with its differential racial/class distributions over this earth. 
> it seems precisely at the level of the nano that these struggles are being 
> played out, within and outside of our own bodies, other living organisms, the 
> surface of the earth and the composition of water.
> 
> what i have been struggling with for a while is a desire to avoid the kind of 
> nihilism that would lead to a relishing in the terminal capitalism/empire 
> moment we seem to be finding ourselves in. beauty in pure destruction  is at 
> once a driver of social change and its expiration. This tendency, seen within 
> certain strands of SR (I am thinking of Nick Land/Reza Negarestani) has an 
> incredible appeal in its heightening of (nano) intensities, in maintaining 
> destruction as an important political concept, but seems to also slide 
> towards messianic end-of-the-world christian narratives of destruction and 
> perfection. is it possible or desirable to think with this material moment, 
> think with the dying cows, rapidly extinguishing species, without giving over 
> to the pure pleasure of annihilation?  how do we think of the collective as 
> necessarily reaching beyond the human, its transversal ontogenesis that 
> encompasses the object revenge that you speak of (especially in relation to 
> non-living objects, such as chemicals, minerals, polymers, etc.) without 
> falling into a kind of christian rapture of the end times. perhaps this is 
> for me where art and theory provide a kind of breaking point/ambiguity that 
> would enable a different kind of movement. in other words, the 
> anti-anti-utopian position of art (through it's multiple negatives that 
> leaves us where exactly?) provides this kind of useful ambiguity that pushes 
> in the direction of new organisms (such as pinar's or ricardo's poetic 
> nano-interventions)   operate as a magical object, that is, the object that 
> wards off the devil by becoming the devil.
>  
> I really love Pinar's categorization of 'post-natural ecosystems' and Elle's 
> ethno-dysphoric cloning in this regard because this categorization offers a 
> way to acknowledge the destruction of capitalism while refusing the scenario 
> of apocalypse that gives too much weight to figures of origins and certainty. 
> thank you for these interventions.
> heather.
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:57 AM, rrdominguez2  wrote:
> Hola Heather and all,
> 
> The transperversal movement(s) that *particle group* attempts to trace via 
> bio/nano scale(s) gestures may indeed call forth "a kind of material 
> corollary" of affect/effect. Elle's capturing the EEG of "ethno-dysphoric 
> cloning" or Pinar's new organ/ism pass and are passing between the utopian 
> synthetics of particle capitalism(s) and the nanocaust (or the revenge of the 
> object) - an apocalyptic materiality. The bio/nano aesthetic in th

Re: [-empyre-] Week 4 - Bio/Nano/Materialisms - the transperversal aesthetic of Texas grasshoppers

[Heather Davis]

The no-future future is definitely something that lays heavy on me, as a
person and as a thinker, especially as it relates to what you call the
'nanocaust' with its differential racial/class distributions over this
earth. it seems precisely at the level of the nano that these struggles are
being played out, within and outside of our own bodies, other living
organisms, the surface of the earth and the composition of water.

what i have been struggling with for a while is a desire to avoid the kind
of nihilism that would lead to a relishing in the terminal
capitalism/empire moment we seem to be finding ourselves in. beauty in pure
destruction  is at once a driver of social change and its expiration. This
tendency, seen within certain strands of SR (I am thinking of Nick Land/Reza
Negarestani) has an incredible appeal in its heightening of (nano)
intensities, in maintaining destruction as an important political concept,
but seems to also slide towards messianic end-of-the-world christian
narratives of destruction and perfection. is it possible or desirable to
think with this material moment, think with the dying cows, rapidly
extinguishing species, without giving over to the pure pleasure of
annihilation?  how do we think of the collective as necessarily reaching
beyond the human, its transversal ontogenesis that encompasses the object
revenge that you speak of (especially in relation to non-living objects,
such as chemicals, minerals, polymers, etc.) without falling into a kind of
christian rapture of the end times. perhaps this is for me where art and
theory provide a kind of breaking point/ambiguity that would enable a
different kind of movement. in other words, the anti-anti-utopian position
of art (through it's multiple negatives that leaves us where exactly?)
provides this kind of useful ambiguity that pushes in the direction of new
organisms (such as pinar's or ricardo's poetic nano-interventions)
operate as a magical object, that is, the object that wards off the devil
by becoming the devil.

I really love Pinar's categorization of 'post-natural ecosystems' and
Elle's ethno-dysphoric cloning in this regard because this categorization
offers a way to acknowledge the destruction of capitalism while refusing
the scenario of apocalypse that gives too much weight to figures of origins
and certainty. thank you for these interventions.
heather.



On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:57 AM, rrdominguez2  wrote:

>  Hola Heather and all,
>
> The trans*per*versal movement(s) that *particle group* attempts to trace
> via bio/nano scale(s) gestures may indeed call forth "a kind of material
> corollary" of affect/effect. Elle's capturing the EEG of "ethno-dysphoric
> cloning" or Pinar's new organ/ism pass and are passing between the utopian
> synthetics of particle capitalism(s) and the nanocaust (or the revenge of
> the object) - an apocalyptic materiality. The bio/nano aesthetic in the
> above work moves within and around a critical anti-anti-utopian condition
> of making these engines of imperceptibility visible - trans*per*versal or
> a type of queering movement.
>
> But one does not have to look very far into the no-future future or the
> freeze dried past to see what grey ecology of bio/nano is manifesting via
> pre-set accidents or trans-effects at the bio/nano scale:
> *
> Genetically modified grass linked to cattle deaths**
>
> http://wtvr.com/2012/06/24/genetically-modified-grass-linked-to-cattle-deaths/
> *
> Indeed a new materialism transmuting feed grass into poison which now only
> Texas grasshoppers are enjoying (the trans*per*versal moment).
>
> As artists we are all Texas grasshoppers - but for how long?
>
> Very best,
> Ricardo
>
>
>
> On 6/24/12 5:27 PM, Heather Davis wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> Apologies for my tardy arrival. I am so excited to be a part of this
> conversation with each of you, and find myself stunned by the quality of
> thought and engagement of my brilliant interlocutors here. Thank you for
> your contributions so for and to Zach and Micha for initiating and curating
> this conversation. I am curious about the way in which the nano, in each of
> your work, becomes a kind of significant imperceptibility. I am thinking
> about how, in a previous discussion this month, the idea of 'queer is
> everywhere' was broached. My initial reaction to this was a kind of doubt,
> not trusting the utopic overtones, nor the amorphous quality of the
> statement that lacked the dissensus that characterizes politics. What I
> appreciate about the nano, in each of your works, Pinar, Ricardo, and Elle,
> is the way in which this kind of utopic moment of the viral meets with an
> politics of imperceptibility not as simply an aversion or counter-move to
> surveillant systems (of sex, the state, neoliberal corporate models, etc.)
> but as an imperceptibility that moves through the body to make significant
> changes. It makes me wonder about the nano as being a kind of material
> corollary of affect - that which carri

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Rob Myers]

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-] More on Bio/Nano Materialisms and Anti-techno-formalism

[micha cárdenas]

Thank you to pinar for your post too! Sorry I didn't see it until today!

I hope you all can chime in about these questions before the week/month ends.

cheers,

  micha


On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 2:00 AM, micha cárdenas  wrote:
> Thank you Ricardo, Elle and Heather for the introductions to your work.
>
> I'm very interested in developing this conversation more to try to
> consider the intersections of queer and bio/nano/materialisms. Do you
> think of your engagements with new media as queer? How so? Also, do
> you think of your engagements with bio/nano technologies as a
> materialist approach or something else? Could you provide some links
> to media that you're described so eloquently here?
>
> I'm interested in how materialism, in it's claims to a kind of reality
> based in matter, relate to a possible techno-formalism and how your
> works escape those. Pinar's work is an excellent example as well, as
> it seems to be more based in fantastical imagination of possibilities
> created as a simulacrum, as in her pieces SuperMammal and Neolabium:
>
> http://pinaryoldas.info/speculativeBiologies/supermammal/
> http://pinaryoldas.info/speculativeBiologies/sample-page/
>
> ...rather than in the techno-formalism often seen in bio-art where the
> artist engages at the level of actual biological production. Do you
> find new media discussions to often be centered around the technology
> "working", in a kind of machismo where the best technology is equated
> with the best art? How do you move in your own work from the actual
> material or data you choose to start with and into a poetics or
> embodiment in performance? How do you respond to audience's or
> curator's concerns with the technical accomplishment in a work?
> Perhaps this is an element of a queer approach to new media, to step
> out of the logic of technical feats that serve as a spectacle to
> pacify or entertain an audience and step into a space that is perhaps
> more confusing, blurred, playful, fem[me/inine] (?), yet still
> intentional.
>
> gracias,
>
>  micha
>
> --
> micha cárdenas
> PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
> Provost Fellow, University of Southern California
>
> New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research
>
> MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego
>
> Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
> http://amzn.to/x8iJcY
>
> blog: http://transreal.org



-- 
micha cárdenas
PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California

New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research

MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY

blog: http://transreal.org
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] Meta-question about the list

[micha cárdenas]

Yes, every message is moderated to facilitate dialog and filter out
announcements, etc.

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Ian Bogost  wrote:
> I apologize in advance for posting this.
>
> But is there a reason this email list withholds messages for many hours and 
> then distributes them all in a burst? Is every message being moderated? If so 
> why? If not, what's going on?
>
> No other mailing list to which I subscribe operates in this manner.
>
> Ian
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre



-- 
micha cárdenas
PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California

New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research

MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY

blog: http://transreal.org
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Timothy Morton]

Thanks for this Davin. I have it queued up. Tim


http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

On Jun 27, 2012, at 3:53 AM, davin heckman  wrote:

> I have an article that I wrote about a year ago which discusses black
> boxes, poetics, and default settings:  Inside Out of the Box: Default
> Settings and Electronic Poetics
> http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2010/heckman/heckman.htm
> 
> It might be a nice complement to the conversation.
> 
> I will take a look at Graham's quadruple object.
> 
> Davin
> 
> On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 12:12 AM, Timothy Morton
>  wrote:
>> Hi---each entity (a thought, an amethyst geode, a bartender) emits spacetime 
>> just as Einstein argued . Graham's The Quadruple Object and my not yet out 
>> Realist Magic go into this.
>> 
>> Each entity "times" in the way Heidegger reserves for Da-sein and Derrida 
>> reserves to the trace.
>> 
>> Time and space are not neutral containers but are emergent properties of 
>> beings.
>> 
>> Tim
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com
>> 
>> On Jun 25, 2012, at 3:15 PM, davin heckman  wrote:
>> 
>>> You are right  I should do more reading.  I find the thoughts
>>> engaging and, since I am in transit, I am eager to get more
>>> information where I can.
>>> 
>>> Ultimately, underneath my questions, I suppose, are some thoughts on
>>> relationality and time.  You have all of these things that have to do
>>> with chairs, but only the chair is the chair.  And there are these
>>> things that have to do with chairs, but which are real in their own
>>> right.  But an idea about a chair kind of flickers in and out of
>>> consciousness, never having a discrete edge, and only become something
>>> definitive when their edges are marked out in some way. It's tempting
>>> to think that one's writing about a thought is separate from the
>>> thought itself, but typically the act of writing or performing a
>>> thought tends to calcify and reinforce it through a feedback loop.
>>> Every time one thinks about a chair, one does not invent a new object.
>>> Similar to a computer program pulling modular entities and reusing
>>> them again and again, our thoughts repeat the concept in our
>>> imagination.  On the other hand, imaginary iterations are not the same
>>> as digital iterations.  Less like a computer, we pull the modular
>>> concept into action and interpret it with a variety of tones.  I
>>> wouldn't want to say these singular thoughts don't exist, but on the
>>> other hand, they don't have the same reality as those thoughts which
>>> are articulated and taken up into collective discourse  and even
>>> still, a discursive "thing" gains a level of significance when it
>>> represents some empirical process.
>>> 
>>> I care about this because a chair changes from one moment to the next.
>>> It becomes materially altered as time unfolds, yet we are comfortable
>>> saying that the chair on day one is that chair on day five.  In other
>>> words, each moment does not unleash a separate chair.  In my mind,
>>> "weight" might be its subjective intensity, its empirical durability,
>>> its social hegemony, its procedural utility, its digital ubiquity, its
>>> aesthetic elegance  though none of these qualities are directly
>>> analogous to the other, suggesting that there are a variety of types
>>> of being.
>>> 
>>> All these thoughts are a jumble  I'll take your advice and do some 
>>> reading.
>>> 
>>> Davin
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Ian Bogost  
>>> wrote:
 A chair is a chair. A picture of a chair is a picture of a chair. A
 definition of a chair is a definition of a chair. None are all chairs, but
 all have something to do with chairs. At least, that's the OOO contention.
 There are no planes of existence… except for Harman (and Tim, to some
 extent), who distinguishes sensual from real objects. For Graham, the idea
 of a chair is different from the real chair, which recedes from all
 encounters. I think this is maybe the conclusion you arrive at in your
 second paragraph below.
 
 NOTHING about OOO privileges the material (i.e., the tangible, physical)
 chair primacy over the others. As for "the same weight" — well, that 
 depends
 on what you mean by "weight." What do you mean?
 
 I hate to say it, but it's maybe not possible to make further progress
 without reading some of this material in depth…
 
 Ian
 
 On Jun 25, 2012, at 3:13 AM, davin heckman wrote:
 
 Ian and Tim,
 
 Do the differences with which we treat objects syncs up with
 ontological difference, and thus, is there something to some of the
 different categorizations we could possibly develop for objects?
 
 I do think there is plenty of room to see these things from a fresh
 perspective, but I also wonder if not, for instance, Kosuth's chairs
  highlight the ways
 that disc

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Timothy Morton]

Dear Simon,

OOO objects are far more fuzzy than your metaphysically present fuzz. They are 
ontologically fuzzy. 

To say fuzzy things are better than smooth things--this is just aesthetic 
ideology run mad. 

Tim


http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

On Jun 26, 2012, at 6:34 PM, Ian Bogost  wrote:

> On Jun 26, 2012, at 3:01 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
> 
>> But Kosuth's chair engaged the simulacra - it addressed conventional notions 
>> of the real as not sustainable. Kosuth's chair is an equivocal chair, a 
>> fuzzy chair, all types of chair - and never a chair. It's a conundrum, and 
>> that was the point.
> 
> Kosuth's One and Three Chairs is about language, about semiotics. Like 
> everything else has been, for so long. The fact that there are chairs, and 
> there are photographs, and there are words—this is what interests me. The 
> fact that conceptual artists can play pranks on the rich benefactors of 
> museums and galleries is not very interesting to me. It's too bad, because 
> when enacted, One and Three Chairs actually DOES begin to draw our attention 
> to things in an appealing way. But not because the real is unsustainable. 
> Rather, because the real is, well, real.
> 
>> I admit I've not read much about OOO and am yet to be convinced it is worth 
>> the effort. I've never been an early adopter - prefer to see the bugs ironed 
>> out of things, at least for one cycle, before buying the gizmo in question 
>> (and I'm mean with my money, so most often I never buy).
> 
> Harman has been writing under the shingle "object-oriented philosophy" since 
> 1999. His first systematic take, the book Tool-Being, was published in 2002. 
> That's a decade ago. Countless other books and articles on and peripheral to 
> OOO have been published in the intervening time. Like it or not, his work and 
> that of others has had an impact on many fields, even if particularly in 
> recent years. 
> 
> If you aren't interested, fine. If you don't want to do the work, fine. But 
> own up to it. Otherwise, it is too tempting to conclude that you wish only to 
> adopt the ideas that prove popular, that become fungible among the same 
> communities for the same purposes.
> 
>> My initial apprehension of OOO is that it doesn't seek to address the 
>> ontology of things as things but their relationships with one another.
> 
> This is precisely the opposite of the main contention of OOO, which holds 
> that something is always left over in things, not used up in their relations. 
> It also addresses, in various and sometimes conflicting ways among its 
> proponents, how things can possibly relate given this basic fact.  
> 
>> The downside of OOO though is that it doesn't seem very fuzzy. I like fuzzy 
>> things. They are soft. I also don't like black boxes - and OOO, by its 
>> nature, will create black boxes (which brings us back to Plato - damn!).
> 
> OOO rejects the idealism of Plato (it's more like Aristotle, another 
> tragically unpopular figure)—you won't find universal forms in OOO, nor even 
> universal properties, or what Whitehead sometimes calls eternal objects. 
> You're right though that OOO embraces the black box, just as Heidegger and 
> Latour do, in different ways.
> 
> In any case, I think we've really hit on what's really going on here. OOO is 
> threatening to many popular theories of art, culture, identity, politics, and 
> so forth because it holds that a toaster is not an octopus. Somehow, we got 
> so turned around in the last half-century, that we decided that a toaster not 
> being an octopus is oppressive and dangerous. This is a fascinating lesson 
> for me and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. I'll have to consider 
> it further.
> 
> Ian
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

[-empyre-] Meta-question about the list

[Ian Bogost]

I apologize in advance for posting this.

But is there a reason this email list withholds messages for many hours and 
then distributes them all in a burst? Is every message being moderated? If so 
why? If not, what's going on?

No other mailing list to which I subscribe operates in this manner.

Ian
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Ian Bogost]

Simon, this conversation is a fool's bargain and I refuse to continue it. You 
suggest that what is worth doing—but not even doing, just reading, even—only 
*will have been* worthwhile after enough time has passed that it can be judged 
on the historical scale. This gambit amounts to a rationalist economics for 
intellectual work at best, and a terrorism against it at worst.

As for OOO, you'd see the links to Latour and Heidegger even more clearly if 
and when you choose read the works that make those connections very explicitly. 
The same is true for its take on toasters. I won't hold my breath.

Good luck with your conceptual art.

Ian

On Jun 27, 2012, at 3:59 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:

> Hi Ian
> 
> Maybe I'm a little old, but 10 to 15 years seems, in terms of human thought, 
> extremely recent. I have read some OOO texts though, during that short period 
> of time. I've also had a little time to digest Kosuth's work, since it was 
> made forty odd years ago. In retrospect his chairs might seem a simplistic 
> reading of semiotics but I'd argue there is more to them than that. They're 
> not just about signs and signifiers but also mediality, sociality and the 
> performative. In the 1960's not many artists were addressing those issues.
> 
> I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest about popularity, or the value of 
> a lack of it. Seems to me that OOO is popular - even fashionable, like the 
> new aesthetic. I can also see links in OOO to Latour, although more so to 
> Heidegger. Perhaps it is a non-phenomenologist's take on Heidegger? Whatever, 
> it isn't fuzzy. Are things that simple? Can we assume there is some kind of 
> residual and irreducible thinginess in things? A toaster can be an octopus - 
> and whatever it might be, from moment to moment, it is rarely a toaster.
> 
> best
> 
> Simon
> 
> 
> On 27 Jun 2012, at 00:34, Ian Bogost wrote:
> 
>> On Jun 26, 2012, at 3:01 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
>> 
>>> But Kosuth's chair engaged the simulacra - it addressed conventional 
>>> notions of the real as not sustainable. Kosuth's chair is an equivocal 
>>> chair, a fuzzy chair, all types of chair - and never a chair. It's a 
>>> conundrum, and that was the point.
>> 
>> Kosuth's One and Three Chairs is about language, about semiotics. Like 
>> everything else has been, for so long. The fact that there are chairs, and 
>> there are photographs, and there are words—this is what interests me. The 
>> fact that conceptual artists can play pranks on the rich benefactors of 
>> museums and galleries is not very interesting to me. It's too bad, because 
>> when enacted, One and Three Chairs actually DOES begin to draw our attention 
>> to things in an appealing way. But not because the real is unsustainable. 
>> Rather, because the real is, well, real.
>> 
>>> I admit I've not read much about OOO and am yet to be convinced it is worth 
>>> the effort. I've never been an early adopter - prefer to see the bugs 
>>> ironed out of things, at least for one cycle, before buying the gizmo in 
>>> question (and I'm mean with my money, so most often I never buy).
>> 
>> Harman has been writing under the shingle "object-oriented philosophy" since 
>> 1999. His first systematic take, the book Tool-Being, was published in 2002. 
>> That's a decade ago. Countless other books and articles on and peripheral to 
>> OOO have been published in the intervening time. Like it or not, his work 
>> and that of others has had an impact on many fields, even if particularly in 
>> recent years. 
>> 
>> If you aren't interested, fine. If you don't want to do the work, fine. But 
>> own up to it. Otherwise, it is too tempting to conclude that you wish only 
>> to adopt the ideas that prove popular, that become fungible among the same 
>> communities for the same purposes.
>> 
>>> My initial apprehension of OOO is that it doesn't seek to address the 
>>> ontology of things as things but their relationships with one another.
>> 
>> This is precisely the opposite of the main contention of OOO, which holds 
>> that something is always left over in things, not used up in their 
>> relations. It also addresses, in various and sometimes conflicting ways 
>> among its proponents, how things can possibly relate given this basic fact.  
>> 
>>> The downside of OOO though is that it doesn't seem very fuzzy. I like fuzzy 
>>> things. They are soft. I also don't like black boxes - and OOO, by its 
>>> nature, will create black boxes (which brings us back to Plato - damn!).
>> 
>> OOO rejects the idealism of Plato (it's more like Aristotle, another 
>> tragically unpopular figure)—you won't find universal forms in OOO, nor even 
>> universal properties, or what Whitehead sometimes calls eternal objects. 
>> You're right though that OOO embraces the black box, just as Heidegger and 
>> Latour do, in different ways.
>> 
>> In any case, I think we've really hit on what's really going on here. OOO is 
>> threatening to many popular theories of art, cult

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Clough, Patricia]

Thanks for this Rob.   It makes a lot of senseWhat is coming with art  
after philosophy  but again  will be interesting. What do you think of the 
queer stuff we have been  viewing and discussing  int his regard? Patricia

From: empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au 
[empyre-boun...@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Robert Jackson 
[robertjackson3...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 6:07 AM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

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.

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 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 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.

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.

best
Rob


On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 5:12 AM, Timothy Morton 
mailto:timothymorton...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi---each entity (a thought, an amethyst geode, a bartender) emits spacetime 
just as Einstein argued . Graham's The Quadruple Object and my not yet out 
Realist Magic go into this.

Each entity "times" in the way Heidegger reserves for Da-sein and Derrida 
reserves to the trace.

Time and space are not neutral containers but are emergent properties of beings.

Tim



http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com

On Jun 25, 2012, at 3:15 PM, davin heckman 
mailto:davinheck...@gmail.com>> wrote:

> You are right  I should do more reading.  I find the thoughts
> engaging and, since I am in transit, I am eager to get more
> information where I can.
>
> Ultimately, underneath my questions, I suppose, are some thoughts on
> relationality and time.  You have all of these things that have to do
> with chairs, but only the chair is the chair.  And there are these
> things that have to do with chairs, but which are real in their own
> right.  But an idea about a chair kind of flickers in and out of
> consciousness, never having a discrete edge, and only become something
> definitive when their edges are marked out in some way. It's tempting
> to think that one's writing about a thought is separate from the
> thought itself, but typically the act of writing or performing a
> thought tends to calcify and reinforce it through a feedback loop.
> Every time one thinks about a chair, one does not invent a new object.
> Similar to a computer program pulling modular entities and reusing
> them again and again, our thoughts repeat the concept in our
> imagination.  On the other hand, imaginary iterations are not the same
> as digital iterations.  Less like a computer, we pull the modular
> concept into action and interpret it with a variety of tones.  I
> wouldn't want to say these singular thoughts don't exist, but on the
> other hand, they don't have the same reality as those thoughts which
> are articulated and taken up into collective discourse  and even
> still, a discursive "thing" gains a level of significance when it
> represents some empirical process.
>
> I care about this because a chair changes from one moment to the next.
> It becomes materially altered as time unfolds, yet we are comfortable
> saying that the chair on day one is that chair on day five.  In other
> words, each moment does not unleash a separate chair.  In my mind,
> "weight" might be its subjective intensity, its empirical durability,
> its social hegemony, its procedural utility, its digital ubiquity, its
> aesthetic elegance  though none of these qualities are directly
> analogous to the other, suggesting that there are a variety of types
> of being.
>
> All these thoughts are a jumble  I'll take your advice and do some 
> reading.
>
> Davin
>
> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Ian Bogost 
> mailto:ian.bog...@lcc.gatech.edu>> wrote:
>> A chair is a chair. A picture of a chair is a picture of a chair. A
>> definition of a chair is a definition of a chair. None are all chairs, but
>> all have something to do with chairs

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[davin heckman]

I have an article that I wrote about a year ago which discusses black
boxes, poetics, and default settings:  Inside Out of the Box: Default
Settings and Electronic Poetics
http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2010/heckman/heckman.htm

It might be a nice complement to the conversation.

I will take a look at Graham's quadruple object.

Davin

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 12:12 AM, Timothy Morton
 wrote:
> Hi---each entity (a thought, an amethyst geode, a bartender) emits spacetime 
> just as Einstein argued . Graham's The Quadruple Object and my not yet out 
> Realist Magic go into this.
>
> Each entity "times" in the way Heidegger reserves for Da-sein and Derrida 
> reserves to the trace.
>
> Time and space are not neutral containers but are emergent properties of 
> beings.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
> http://www.ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com
>
> On Jun 25, 2012, at 3:15 PM, davin heckman  wrote:
>
>> You are right  I should do more reading.  I find the thoughts
>> engaging and, since I am in transit, I am eager to get more
>> information where I can.
>>
>> Ultimately, underneath my questions, I suppose, are some thoughts on
>> relationality and time.  You have all of these things that have to do
>> with chairs, but only the chair is the chair.  And there are these
>> things that have to do with chairs, but which are real in their own
>> right.  But an idea about a chair kind of flickers in and out of
>> consciousness, never having a discrete edge, and only become something
>> definitive when their edges are marked out in some way. It's tempting
>> to think that one's writing about a thought is separate from the
>> thought itself, but typically the act of writing or performing a
>> thought tends to calcify and reinforce it through a feedback loop.
>> Every time one thinks about a chair, one does not invent a new object.
>> Similar to a computer program pulling modular entities and reusing
>> them again and again, our thoughts repeat the concept in our
>> imagination.  On the other hand, imaginary iterations are not the same
>> as digital iterations.  Less like a computer, we pull the modular
>> concept into action and interpret it with a variety of tones.  I
>> wouldn't want to say these singular thoughts don't exist, but on the
>> other hand, they don't have the same reality as those thoughts which
>> are articulated and taken up into collective discourse  and even
>> still, a discursive "thing" gains a level of significance when it
>> represents some empirical process.
>>
>> I care about this because a chair changes from one moment to the next.
>> It becomes materially altered as time unfolds, yet we are comfortable
>> saying that the chair on day one is that chair on day five.  In other
>> words, each moment does not unleash a separate chair.  In my mind,
>> "weight" might be its subjective intensity, its empirical durability,
>> its social hegemony, its procedural utility, its digital ubiquity, its
>> aesthetic elegance  though none of these qualities are directly
>> analogous to the other, suggesting that there are a variety of types
>> of being.
>>
>> All these thoughts are a jumble  I'll take your advice and do some 
>> reading.
>>
>> Davin
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Ian Bogost  
>> wrote:
>>> A chair is a chair. A picture of a chair is a picture of a chair. A
>>> definition of a chair is a definition of a chair. None are all chairs, but
>>> all have something to do with chairs. At least, that's the OOO contention.
>>> There are no planes of existence… except for Harman (and Tim, to some
>>> extent), who distinguishes sensual from real objects. For Graham, the idea
>>> of a chair is different from the real chair, which recedes from all
>>> encounters. I think this is maybe the conclusion you arrive at in your
>>> second paragraph below.
>>>
>>> NOTHING about OOO privileges the material (i.e., the tangible, physical)
>>> chair primacy over the others. As for "the same weight" — well, that depends
>>> on what you mean by "weight." What do you mean?
>>>
>>> I hate to say it, but it's maybe not possible to make further progress
>>> without reading some of this material in depth…
>>>
>>> Ian
>>>
>>> On Jun 25, 2012, at 3:13 AM, davin heckman wrote:
>>>
>>> Ian and Tim,
>>>
>>> Do the differences with which we treat objects syncs up with
>>> ontological difference, and thus, is there something to some of the
>>> different categorizations we could possibly develop for objects?
>>>
>>> I do think there is plenty of room to see these things from a fresh
>>> perspective, but I also wonder if not, for instance, Kosuth's chairs
>>>  highlight the ways
>>> that discrete objects can differ from each other, but also the ways in
>>> which there are consistencies that can yoke them together in odd ways.
>>> A picture of a chair is not a chair, a definition of chair is not a
>>> chair, instructions about a chair is not a chair, a chair as a
>>> sculpture i

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman

[Simon Biggs]

Hi Ian

Maybe I'm a little old, but 10 to 15 years seems, in terms of human thought, 
extremely recent. I have read some OOO texts though, during that short period 
of time. I've also had a little time to digest Kosuth's work, since it was made 
forty odd years ago. In retrospect his chairs might seem a simplistic reading 
of semiotics but I'd argue there is more to them than that. They're not just 
about signs and signifiers but also mediality, sociality and the performative. 
In the 1960's not many artists were addressing those issues.

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest about popularity, or the value of a 
lack of it. Seems to me that OOO is popular - even fashionable, like the new 
aesthetic. I can also see links in OOO to Latour, although more so to 
Heidegger. Perhaps it is a non-phenomenologist's take on Heidegger? Whatever, 
it isn't fuzzy. Are things that simple? Can we assume there is some kind of 
residual and irreducible thinginess in things? A toaster can be an octopus - 
and whatever it might be, from moment to moment, it is rarely a toaster.

best

Simon


On 27 Jun 2012, at 00:34, Ian Bogost wrote:

> On Jun 26, 2012, at 3:01 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:
> 
>> But Kosuth's chair engaged the simulacra - it addressed conventional notions 
>> of the real as not sustainable. Kosuth's chair is an equivocal chair, a 
>> fuzzy chair, all types of chair - and never a chair. It's a conundrum, and 
>> that was the point.
> 
> Kosuth's One and Three Chairs is about language, about semiotics. Like 
> everything else has been, for so long. The fact that there are chairs, and 
> there are photographs, and there are words—this is what interests me. The 
> fact that conceptual artists can play pranks on the rich benefactors of 
> museums and galleries is not very interesting to me. It's too bad, because 
> when enacted, One and Three Chairs actually DOES begin to draw our attention 
> to things in an appealing way. But not because the real is unsustainable. 
> Rather, because the real is, well, real.
> 
>> I admit I've not read much about OOO and am yet to be convinced it is worth 
>> the effort. I've never been an early adopter - prefer to see the bugs ironed 
>> out of things, at least for one cycle, before buying the gizmo in question 
>> (and I'm mean with my money, so most often I never buy).
> 
> Harman has been writing under the shingle "object-oriented philosophy" since 
> 1999. His first systematic take, the book Tool-Being, was published in 2002. 
> That's a decade ago. Countless other books and articles on and peripheral to 
> OOO have been published in the intervening time. Like it or not, his work and 
> that of others has had an impact on many fields, even if particularly in 
> recent years. 
> 
> If you aren't interested, fine. If you don't want to do the work, fine. But 
> own up to it. Otherwise, it is too tempting to conclude that you wish only to 
> adopt the ideas that prove popular, that become fungible among the same 
> communities for the same purposes.
> 
>> My initial apprehension of OOO is that it doesn't seek to address the 
>> ontology of things as things but their relationships with one another.
> 
> This is precisely the opposite of the main contention of OOO, which holds 
> that something is always left over in things, not used up in their relations. 
> It also addresses, in various and sometimes conflicting ways among its 
> proponents, how things can possibly relate given this basic fact.  
> 
>> The downside of OOO though is that it doesn't seem very fuzzy. I like fuzzy 
>> things. They are soft. I also don't like black boxes - and OOO, by its 
>> nature, will create black boxes (which brings us back to Plato - damn!).
> 
> OOO rejects the idealism of Plato (it's more like Aristotle, another 
> tragically unpopular figure)—you won't find universal forms in OOO, nor even 
> universal properties, or what Whitehead sometimes calls eternal objects. 
> You're right though that OOO embraces the black box, just as Heidegger and 
> Latour do, in different ways.
> 
> In any case, I think we've really hit on what's really going on here. OOO is 
> threatening to many popular theories of art, culture, identity, politics, and 
> so forth because it holds that a toaster is not an octopus. Somehow, we got 
> so turned around in the last half-century, that we decided that a toaster not 
> being an octopus is oppressive and dangerous. This is a fascinating lesson 
> for me and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. I'll have to consider 
> it further.
> 
> Ian
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 


Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: 
simonbiggsuk

s.bi...@ed.ac.uk Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ 
http://www.movingtargets.co.uk/

__

Re: [-empyre-] to jacob & homay

[Rob Jackson]

Hi Everyone.

I know this thread is closed, but I wrote this for Furtherfield for Turing's 
birthday - contains links to Homay's work and other articles. Forgot to tell 
everyone on here!

[http://www.furtherfield.org/features/articles/why-arent-we-reading-turing] 

many thanks

Rob

On 16 Jun 2012, at 09:07, shu lea cheang wrote:

> hi, all
> 
> first i take a bow for much support of my work on this list.
> a quick note to say, if you need to teach BRANDON, please write to guggenheim 
> (or me)
> to obtain the password for the website, if somehow they still have not got it 
> back online by this fall.
> a recent interview at Rhizome about this work
> http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/may/10/shu-lea-cheang-on-brandon/
> 
> I have been reading all the post with great interest...but was caught between 
> macbeth and kurosawa with Moving Forest 2012 in london. to be launched june 
> 22 with 12 day prelude, 12 hour performance and a CODA.http://movingforest.net
> I have also invited Zach and Micha to participate in the project. (and yes, 
> all of you can join)
> question: where/who are the queers in the insurgency?
> 
> ah, sorry for the diversion...
> 
> indeed, my entry here follows Zach's question,
> " how Turing's scientific and computational research could be infused with 
> his erotic desires. "
> and  jacob and homay's research notes.
> Speaking of non-human and turing machine, check back on Blade Runner's turing 
> test.
> "Is this testing whether i am a replicant or a lesbian? Mr. Deckard"
> Much cross references can be made here.
> My own I.K.U. movie which picks up where Blade Runner left us in the elevator,
> cast a transsexual to play Deckard in fully expressed (not repressed) xxx 
> desire.
> UKI as I.K.U. sequel dumps defunct (machine/code) replicants admist code 
> hackers
> I have been very interested in the parallel development of code/body viral 
> writing.
> 
> do want to add on to Zach's virus book list also
> Jussi Parrika 's 'Digital Contagions"
> and Matthew Fuller's interview with JP
> http://www.spc.org/fuller/interviews/jussi-parikka-interview-on-digital-contagions/
> 
> thanks all
> quite notes for now
> 
> sl
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Re: [-empyre-] Meillassoux / Harman / Kosuth

[Jon Ippolito]

Hi Simon,

As I'm sure you know, Kosuth's essay "Art After Philosophy" seemed to imply a 
platonic solution to that conundrum. His essay claims what's important about 
chairs (and art) is the unique idea conveyed to us by their varying 
manifestations, whether dictionary definition, photo, or wooden furniture.

I had the opposite impression standing in front of One and Three Chairs. What 
struck me--and indeed seemed highlighted by the work's presentation--was how 
different each of the versions were, and how ludicrous it seemed to pretend 
details like the smell of wood, the pale black-and-white print, and the 
dictionary typeface were just incidental projections of the same "higher" 
concept into our reality.

When I mentioned the disparity between what I saw in his work and what he wrote 
in "Art After Philosophy," Kosuth told me to "forgive the immature 
proclamations of a 23-year-old" or something to that effect.

Occasionally people view the variable media paradigm as similarly platonic--an 
approach to preservation that only applies to conceptual art. But just as One 
and Three Chairs is about the differences that inevitably emerge among 
difference instances of the same concept, so media and performative artworks 
are never the same from one viewing to another.

I think Euro-ethnic culture needs more practice accepting difference. One of 
the few useful nuggets I've gleaned from Jacques Lacan (via Joline Blais) is 
his division of the world into theory (Lacan's "symbolic"), what we take for 
real (Lacan's "imaginary"), and what we don't realize we are leaving out 
(Lacan's "real").

I like to lob this self-damning formulation at philosophers who busy themselves 
nailing down ontologies in their head instead of nailing down shingles on an 
ecovillage home somewhere.

OK, back to building my own ecovillage on the coast of Maine.

jon
http://MaineCohousing.org

Simon wrote:
> Kosuth's chair engaged the simulacra - it addressed conventional notions of 
> the real as not sustainable. Kosuth's chair is an equivocal chair, a fuzzy 
> chair, all types of chair - and never a chair. It's a conundrum, and that was 
> the point.

___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

[-empyre-] More on Bio/Nano Materialisms and Anti-techno-formalism

[micha cárdenas]

Thank you Ricardo, Elle and Heather for the introductions to your work.

I'm very interested in developing this conversation more to try to
consider the intersections of queer and bio/nano/materialisms. Do you
think of your engagements with new media as queer? How so? Also, do
you think of your engagements with bio/nano technologies as a
materialist approach or something else? Could you provide some links
to media that you're described so eloquently here?

I'm interested in how materialism, in it's claims to a kind of reality
based in matter, relate to a possible techno-formalism and how your
works escape those. Pinar's work is an excellent example as well, as
it seems to be more based in fantastical imagination of possibilities
created as a simulacrum, as in her pieces SuperMammal and Neolabium:

http://pinaryoldas.info/speculativeBiologies/supermammal/
http://pinaryoldas.info/speculativeBiologies/sample-page/

...rather than in the techno-formalism often seen in bio-art where the
artist engages at the level of actual biological production. Do you
find new media discussions to often be centered around the technology
"working", in a kind of machismo where the best technology is equated
with the best art? How do you move in your own work from the actual
material or data you choose to start with and into a poetics or
embodiment in performance? How do you respond to audience's or
curator's concerns with the technical accomplishment in a work?
Perhaps this is an element of a queer approach to new media, to step
out of the logic of technical feats that serve as a spectacle to
pacify or entertain an audience and step into a space that is perhaps
more confusing, blurred, playful, fem[me/inine] (?), yet still
intentional.

gracias,

  micha

-- 
micha cárdenas
PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California

New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research

MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY

blog: http://transreal.org
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre