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
5/30/07
)
Destructive Creativity:
The Case of Viral or Hacker Art
(1) 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).
"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' ")
(3) 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."
There are two ways to view these images
of information identity:
(1) One interpretation is that these
are images of people who inhabit the new
information work as non-identities.
According to this interpretation:
Computers are just calculating machines
Sherry Turkle,
"Who Am We?":
"As recently as
10 to 15 years ago, . . .
The computer had a clear
intellectual identity
as a calculating machine.
In an introductory programming
course at Harvard University
in 1978, one professor
introduced the computer
to the class by calling
it a giant calculator."
(p. 237)
Computer users are "nerds"
and "geeks" (i.e., people
with non-existent or socially under-developed
identities)
In short, computer users are themselves
like machines. They wear sunglasses
that betray no identity or feeling.
They are all like Keanu Reeves pretending
to be Arnold Schwarzenegger as the "terminator,"
except with a keyboard instead of a
.45.
(2) The other interpretation is the one
that has been gaining ground in the past
10 or 15 years:
Once the computer became a machine
of media and communications,
and also a machine of work and power,
then it obviously became more than a
calculating machine.
The computer became a machine for
making, changing, and experiencing human
identity.
These are images of a new kind of
identity in cyberspace.
What is Identity? — A
Primer in the Contemporary Debate
About Identity in the Humanities
and Social Science
Identity — The
Difference Computers Make
Identity — The
Difference Computers Do Not Make
(the problem of online gender and
race)
What is Identity? — A
Primer in the Contemporary Debate
About Identity in the Humanities
and Social Sciences
Enlightenment idea of identity: "liberal
individualism" (from the Cartesian cogito to "rational
choice theory")
Modern idea of identity: identity
is determined by a larger structure
(e.g., Freud, Max Weber, Frankfurt
School, Claude Lévi-Strauss)
Postmodern idea of identity:
identity is part of an indeterminate
structure. Some influential "constructionist" or "deconstructive" theories:
French poststructuralism—e.g., Michel
Foucault on knowledge
structures ("epistemes"), "disciplinary
practices," and "discourses" of
identity
Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari on "schizoanalysis" and "deterritorialization"
"Hybridity" theory
in race, gender, and postcolonial
studies
Artificial-intelligence studies
and the "society of the
mind" thesis (e.g., Marvin
Minsky, The Society of the
Mind, 1985)
Cyborg theory:
Donna
Haraway, "A
Manifesto
for Cyborgs"
"Irony
is about
contradictions
that do not
resolve into
larger wholes,
even dialectically,
about the
tension of
holding incompatible
things together
because both
or all are
necessary
and true. . . .
By the late
twentieth
century, . . .
we are all
chimeras,
theorized
and fabricated
hybrids of
machine and
organism;
in short
we are cyborgs." (p.
28)
Hybridization of boundaries between (1) human and animal,
(2) human and machine, (3) matter and pure spirit (see
pp. 29-31)
Cf., Bruno
Latour on
technology
in We Have
Never Been
Modern
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]
