This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion
(excerpts from readings, outlines of issues,
links to resources, etc.). The materials
are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page
is subject to revision as the instructor
finalizes preparation. (Last revised
3/3/03
)
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Finishing Up with
Neuromancer
My argument last time about human identity
as choice, commitment, and the "meat":
Case's journey of self-discovery (pp.
56, 152, 239-40, 262-63)
Significance of the "meat":
an assertion of human vs.
"transhuman"
or "posthuman" identity:
cf., N. Katherine Hayles, How
We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies
in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics (1999)
a redemption of the notion
of "corporate" identity:
"corporate"
[Latin corporatus, past participle
of corporareto, make into
a body, from corpus body]
"corporation"
"A body that is granted a charter
legally recognizing it as a separate
legal entity having its own rights,
privileges, and liabilities distinct
from those of its members"
(American Heritage Dictionary)
Gibson's
fundamentalist view of the corporation:
a regrounding of corporate existence
in the individual human body
Neuromancer:
Corporate Identity in the Postindustrial
Age
Does the novel imagine a redeemed identity
for the corporate organization in its
larger sense as well? (Is the novel an
alternative Workplace 2000 or The
Virtual Corporation?)
A review of the novel's meditations on
the corporate form:
The atavistic clan-corporation using
a technology of computers and cyrogenics:
(pp. 203, 173)
Marie-France Tessier's vision of
a new kind of corporation using a technology
of computers and cloning: (pp. 217,
229)
A review of the "dance" metaphor
in the novel: (pp. 16, 44, 116, 249, 262)
Networked
identity: individuals as nodes in
a networked whole
Postindustrial business,
knowledge work, "Biz"
Ashpool vision of
future corporations
Anti-networking,
ICE, Turing law check on Wintermute
& Neuromancer
Incestuous, inward
turning identity of the Straylight
Villa
(None)
Tessier vision of
future corporations
Wintermute + Neuromancer
= meta-matrix
Transcendence of
the individual: "There's others.
I found one already" (p. 270)
?
?
Hacking
Zen identity that
includes elements of networked identity
(oneness with others), incestuous
identity (centered), & transcendent
identity. A virus identity (like
Kuang virus).
"Dance of biz"
or "art" of biz (e.g., Hideo,
Case, Molly). Case as "artiste."
Artistic Responses
to Postindustrialism
One
view of the role of art (specifically,
information art) in the postindustrial
age:
From the section on "The
Rebirth of the Modern"
at the end of Richard Barbrook
and Andy Cameron's "The
Californian Ideology":
"As pioneers of the
new, digital artisans need
to reconnect themselves with
the theory and practice of
productive art. They are not
just employees of others—or
even would-be cybernetic entrepreneurs.
They are also artist-engineers—designers
of the next stage of modernity."
cf., Bauhaus (1
| 2)
and Modernist art and
literature, Ezra Pound's
"make
it new"
In short, artists are creative.
Another
view of the role of art (specifically,
information art) in the postindustrial
age:
The "kung-fu" hacker:
Case in Neuromancer
(an "artiste"
of "biz" whose
art is hacking and mental
martial arts, p. 262)
"in the 1980s
there emerges into popular
culture the figure of
cyberpunk hacker. I
read the cyberpunk hacker
made popular by novels
like Gibson's Neuromancer
and Stephenson's Snow
Crash, as one who
finds a way to participate
in the design,
disruption and redirection
of the software environment,
even though he or she
has been excluded from
the design team."
In short, not "make it
new" (innovation, creation)
but destruction: break it
open, break it apart. Avant-garde
art as critique.
Context: Rough sketch of past rationales
for art (and literature): (larger
version)
What is the rationale of contemporary
art and literature? The problem is that
mainstream society in the form of postindustrial
business has taken over the "make
it new" ideology. Postindustrialism
is about "creative destruction,"
with the emphasis on "creativity"
and "innovation"
(Gates
on innovation). (The "chief
innovation officer")
One major option being explored by contemporary
art: "destructive creativity."
Destructive Creativity:
The Case of Viral or Hacker Art
(1) A precedent: 20th-century "auto-destructive
art"
from Metzger's 1965 lecture
proposing large-scale projects:
"The
third project I would like to
consider is in the shape of
a 30 ft cube. The shell of the
cube is in steel with a non-reflective
surface. The interior of the
cube is completely packed with
complex, rather expensive, electronic
equipment. This equipment is
programmed to undergo a series
of breakdowns and self-devouring
activities. This goes on for
a number of years - but there
is no visible trace of this
activity. It is only when the
entire interior has been wrecked
that the steel shell is pierced
from within. Gradually, layer
after layer of the steel structure
is disintegrated by complex
electrical, chemical and mechanical
forces. The shell bursts open
in different parts revealing
the wreckage of the internal
structure through the ever changing
forms of the cube. Finally,
all that remains is a pile of
rubble. This sculpture should
be at a site around which there
is considerable traffic."
(2) Contemporary digital example: Joseph
Nechvatal's Virus Art
Nechvatal's work in the
1980s:
Physical-media works that
recombined and recomposed
"found" media
images: "intimately
scaled graphite drawings
comprising saturated, interwoven
line tracings of pictures
culled from newspapers and
magazines" (Barry Blinderman)
Conceptually destructive:"I
tend to degenerate archetypal
media images," Nechvatal
said in 1984. "I rip
off images from the media
. . . then destroy/transform
them in the interests of
unintelligible beauty"
(quoted in Carlo McCormick).
Alluded to the general
destructivity of contemporary
technologies usually feted
for their innovation and
creativity. Nechvatal:
"Images of mass annihilation
wrought by technology now
provide the major context
for our art and our lives.
With profoundly disturbed
psyches, modern people encounter
their existential fear in
the atom, for when technology
relieved much of man's fear
of nature it replaced that
fear with one of technology
itself" (quoted
in Frank Popper).
>Do
you see electronic media
as obscuring communication?
jodi yes/no
ill.communication is ok
,makes good noise
^$%&$%^$%^$^&*&$%$&^(&$^247
(Mark Napier, interview
with Jodi; quoted in Sandra
Fauconnier)
Information art is "hackerly"
"When
a viewer looks at our work,
we are inside his computer.
There is this hacker slogan:
"We love your computer."
We also get inside people's
computers. And we are honored
to be in somebody's computer.
You are very close to a
person when you are on his
desktop. I think the computer
is a device to get into
someone's mind. We replace
this mythological notion
of a virtual society on
the net or whatever with
our own work. We put our
own personality there."
(Baumgärtel, "
'We love your computer'
")
(4) Beyond Auto-Destructive Art: Critical
Art Ensemble
from "Electronic Civil
Disobedience":
"The strategy and tactics
of ECD should not be a mystery
to any activists. They are the
same as traditional CD. ECD
is a nonviolent activity by
its very nature, since the oppositional
forces never physically confront
one another. As
in CD, the primary tactics in
ECD are trespass and blockage.
Exits, entrances, conduits,
and other key spaces must be
occupied by the contestational
force in order to bring pressure
on legitimized institutions
engaged in unethical or criminal
actions. Blocking information
conduits is analogous to blocking
physical locations; however,
electronic blockage can cause
financial stress that physical
blockage cannot, and it can
be used beyond the local level.
ECD is CD reinvigorated. What
CD once was, ECD is now. Activists
must remember that ECD can easily
be abused. The sites for disturbance
must be carefully selected."
Gustav
Metzger (site includes texts
of his "Earth to Galaxies: On Destruction
and Destructivity," "Manifesto
Auto-Destructive Art," "Auto
Destructive Art - Machine Art - Auto
Creative Art," Entartete Kunst,
retrieved 17 Jan. 2001 [site now defunct]
