The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.
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Subject: RHIZOME DIGEST: 1.03.03 From: digest@rhizome.org (RHIZOME) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 16:47:54 -0500 Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org RHIZOME DIGEST: January 3, 2003 Content: +announcement+ 1. RTMark Press: THING.NET EVICTED FROM INTERNET 2. Benjamin Fischer: 6. Stuttgarter Filmwinter - online 3. cory arcangel: SAT ---> FROM SCRATCH 4. abraham linkoln: Call for rejected proposals +opportunity+ 5. Mark Tribe: Development & Finance Internship at Rhizome.org +work+ 6. Annie Abrahams: separation/séparation +comment+ 7. Brett Stalbaum: Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art [1/5] +feature+ 8. McKenzie Wark: review - Konrad Becker, Tactical Reality Dictionary: Cultural Intelligence and Social Control + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 12.23.02 From: RTMark Press (ann45 AT rtmark.com) Subject: THING.NET EVICTED FROM INTERNET December 23, 2002 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thing.net assistance page: https://secure.thing.net/backbone/ Contact: mailto:thing-group AT rtmark.com ACTIVIST NETWORK IN NY EVICTED FROM INTERNET BY DOW, VERIO Bowing to pressure from the Dow Chemical Corporation, the internet company Verio has booted the activist-oriented Thing.net from the Web. Internet service provider Thing.net has been the primary service provider for activist and artist organizations in the New York area for 10 years. On December 3, activists used a server housed by Thing.net to post a parody Dow press release on the eighteenth anniversary of the disaster in which 20,000 people died as a result of an accident at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India. (Union Carbide is now owned by Dow.) The deadpan statement, which many people took as real, explained that Dow could not accept responsibility for the disaster due to its primary allegiance to its shareholders and to its bottom line. Dow was not amused, and sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint to Verio, which immediately cut Thing.net off the internet for fifteen hours. A few days later, Verio announced that Thing.net had 60 days to move to another provider before being shut down permanently, unilaterally terminating Thing.net's 7-year-old contract. Affected organizations include PS1/MOMA, Artforum, Nettime, Tenant.net (which assists renters facing eviction), and hundreds more. "Verio's actions are nothing short of outrageous," said Wolfgang Staehle, Thing.net Executive Director. "They could have resolved the matter with the Dow parodists directly; instead they chose to shut down our entire network. This self-appointed enforcement of the DMCA could have a serious chilling effect on free speech, and has already damaged our business." RTMark, which publicizes corporate abuses of democracy, is housed on Thing.net. Please visit https://secure.thing.net/backbone/ to help Thing.net survive Dow's and Verio's actions, and to develop a plan to avoid such problems in the future. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 12.23.02 From: Benjamin Fischer (benjamin_lists AT typedown.com) Subject: 6. Stuttgarter Filmwinter - online English version see below ______________ Liebe FreundInnen des Filmwinters, es ist kurz vor Weihnachten und schon bald steht die 16. Ausgabe des Stuttgarter Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media - ins Haus. Ab dem 9. Januar geht es schon mit einigen Warm Up-Veranstaltungen los. Vom 16.-19. Januar 2003 findet dann das Festival im Filmhaus Stuttgart und im Ex-IKEA statt. Aus 1300 Einreichungen in den Bereichen Kurzfilm und -video, Medieninstallationen, CD-ROM und Internet haben die Vorauswahlkommissionen die spannendsten Arbeiten ausgewählt. Im Rahmenprogramm gibt eine Werkschau mit Videos von Erwin Wurm zu sehen. Unter dem Schlagwort "Erdung" haben wir uns mit dem "neuen Heimatgefühl in der Medienkunst" auseinandergesetzt. Gibt es ein Korrektiv auf Mobilisierung, Flexibilisierung und Globalisierung, ohne in das traditionelle Werteschema zurückzufallen, das mit Begriffen wie "Wurzel" oder "Heimat" verknüpft ist? Das Programm "Gegenspieler" beschäftigt sich mit "Machinimas" und subversiven Erzählformen in Computerspielen. Weitere Informationen zu Programm und Gästen, Eintrittspreisen und Veranstaltungsorten findet Ihr auf unserer Website http://www.filmwinter.de Cheers, Wanda +*+*+*+*+* Dear friends of the Stuttgart Filmwinter, just before x-mas, I want to announce the upcoming 16th Stuttgart Filmwinter - Festival for Expanded Media. The event starts with a Warm Up from January 9 on with various exhibitions and programmes. The festival itself takes place from January 16-19 at the Stuttgart Filmhaus and the Ex-IKEA (former IKEA-building). >From 1300 submissions in the field von short film and video, media installation, CD-ROM and Internet the selection committees have selected the outstanding works. In the special programmes we feature a video retrospective of Erwin Wurm. Under the catchwork "Erdung" (Grounding) we have compiled works and organized lectures which deals with the "new feeling of attachment to one's home town". Which roles inhere geographical and emotional places in today's media society? Is there a corrective to the trends of mobilization, flexploitation, and globalization? And does this mean we are returning to traditional value systems, implying expressions such as "home" and "roots"? The programme "Gegenspieler" (counterplots) deals with "Machinimas" and subversive narration in computer games. You find all relevant information on programme and guests, admission and venues on our web site http://www.filmwinter.de + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 1.2.03 From: cory arcangel (corya AT harvestworks.org) Subject: SAT ---> FROM SCRATCH >From Scratch a FREE Music / Art Event When: Saturday 1/4/2003 6:00PM Where: Gale-Martin Fine Art 134 10th Avenue (between 18th and 19th St) New York A/C/E to 14th St or L to 8th Ave FREE FREE (food provided by Big Mama?s Food Shop) Public Contact: fromscratchny AT yahoo.com Our culture is soaked in digital perfection. Seamless digital imagery, sequenced samples and software-tuned pop singers mediate our references to the world and to each other. The artists in From Scratch share a common practice of using handmade electronic equipment and altering (hacking) factory-made machines; tugging at the seams of our technology. The intrinsic imprecision of their machines enables creativity, instead of their creativity being defined by the machines they use. They put themselves into their machines. The results are fascinating. >From Scratch is a program of electronically based music, video and installations featuring artists who build their own equipment from scratch. The sounds, performances and images will be noisy and amusingly hard to predict. The Artists Nautical Almanac (Baltimore) Hanson Records http://www.heresee.com ?[Nautical Almanac] look like creatures that have crawled out of a futuristic trashheap with an inexplicablecommunications technology... post-apocalyptic alchemists... a carefully considered chaos born of technological refinement and cannibalism.? (Baltimore City Paper) 5000 oscillators pitchshifted, reverbed, and delayed, wires everywhere, resistors ascew, chips hacked, all gets taken apart and reformed. No equipement is safe from the prying minds of Nautical Almanac. Watch out! A mere stare from their razor sharp eyes will take apart your computers. Diagram A (western MA) music/video performance Diagram A is cobbled together from "disposable technology" like children's toys, video games and surplus electronics. Sonically and visually demonstrating man's war with his own technology through the language specific to machines - Noise. Iron Lap (Brooklyn) music performance Sounds Okay http://www.soundsokay.com Sonic slagheaps. Careening, voluptuous spasms of barely controllable electronoise. Raw and epic in scale. And there's a guitar so it's rock and roll. No laptops. Gavin R. Russom & Delia R. Gonzalez (NY) music performance Cory Arcangel (NY) music/video performance/installation Beige Records http://www.beigerecords.com/cory His work and collaborations with BEIGE have been called "a testament to nerdiness" by The New York Times, "genius" by XLR8R magazine, "riotous" by the Village Voice, and "Dope, dope, dope, dope" by Paul D. Miller. LoVid (NY) video/sound performance kaboom!press http://www.ignivomous.org/lovid.html A sound and video project by Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. Fragile compositions of the decay of sound and image present a portrait of the human figure trapped in the chaos of electronic noise. Douglas Irving Repetto (NY) installation: crash and bloom crash and bloom 2001-2002 plastic boxes, colored LEDs, piezo speakers, custom circuitry dimensions variable crash and bloom is an electronic sculpture that exhibits emergent behavior similar to the "crash and bloom" cycles experienced by many biological systems. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 12.27.02 From: abraham linkoln (abelinkoln AT hotmail.com) Subject: Call for rejected proposals Have you made a web page proposal for a project grant or show and have been rejected? If so I?d like to link to your proposal page for a show on projects that never had a chance to actualize for one reason (money) or another (lack of resources, loss of interest, etc). Please email your links to abelinkoln AT hotmail.com abe http://www.linkoln.net + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 12.30.02 From: Mark Tribe (mt AT rhizome.org) Subject: Development & Finance Internship at Rhizome.org Rhizome.org is seeking a responsible, professional and energetic individual to work with the Executive Director on institutional development and related financial planning. This internship will offer valuable hands-on experience and significant responsibility. The ideal candidate is highly organized and efficient, has experience with grants and budgets and is either a student at or recent graduate of an arts administration program or business school. Exceptional candidates with equivalent experience may also be considered. Responsibilities: * Collect and organize grant application and reporting materials based existing grant schedule * Update grant schedule as needed * Prepare grant budgets based on existing organizational budgets and discussion with program staff * Coordinate writing of grants with program staff * Assemble and post completed grant application and report materials * Additional or alternative responsibilities, such as major donor campaigns, are also possible Required Knowledge and Skills: * Knowledge of grant application and reporting process * Allocation of income and expenses in grant budgets * High level of proficiency in Microsoft Excel and Word Hours: 20+ hours per week Dates: January 15 - April 15, 2003 How to apply: Please send a cover letter in the body of an email message with resume attached as MS Word or RTF document to Mark Tribe <mt AT rhizome.org>. Note: This is an unpaid internship; if you plan to receive credit for this work, we will be happy complete any necessary forms. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Virtual reality has been a recurrent theme throughout art history, from trompe l'oeil to Smell-o-vision. Oliver Grau's forthcoming book Virtual Art:From Illusion to Immersion traces virtual reality from ancient Rome to contemporary art. To order your copy visit our website AT http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/isast/leobooks.html + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 12.29.02 From: Annie Abrahams (a AT bram.org) Subject: separation/séparation bonjour/hello new: 'separation/séparation' or 'my hart hurts/mon coeur me fait mal' collaboration with/avec l'association Panoplie http://www.panoplie.org/ecart/annie/index.htm Originally a text written during a stay in the hospital in 2001. The visitor is constrained to follow the implemented exercises. Don't be fooled this piece is working. A l'origine un texte écrit en 2001 pendant un séjour à l'hôpital. Dans sa mise en forme l'internaute est obligé de suivre les contraintes implémentées. Ne vous trompez pas ce travail marche bel et bien. Besides in French/français and in Greek you can now be reassured in Dutch/nederlands, Norwegian/norsk, German/deutsch and in Arab. http://www.bram.org/confort/rassur.htm Sur http://www.uyio.com/quizz/ quatre quizz sur Mouchette, Eric Maillet, Claude Closky et Annie Abrahams.(only in french) uyio.com is made by Nicolas Freshpech, whose piece:'Je suis ton ami(e)...tu peux me dire tes secrets' has been off line (censured) already for a year. more info: http://frespech.com/secret/english.html Je suis ton ami(e)...tu ne peux me dire tes secrets 1 année de censure !!! info: http://frespech.com/secret/ salutations Annie Abrahams + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 12.18.02 From: Brett Stalbaum (beestal AT cadre.sjsu.edu) Subject: Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art [1/5] Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art Brett Stalbaum, C5 corporation Introduction: the logics of database logic [1/5] The important question for contemporary information artists working with global information systems is, "How do we view the landscape according to database logic?" But before this surprisingly complicated problem can be parsed, there is a semantic issue regarding the meaning of "database logic" that must be clarified before we can embark on our search for an answer. "Database logic" is overloaded. One signature of the aesthetics of database is multi-layered, relating to various data modeling techniques and APIs for accessing and processing data, whereas another signature of "database logic" lies in relation to the visual, audible and interactive presentation of a work: interfacial aesthetics. Thus there are more "database logics" than those that are directly manifest in the visual, interactive and user interface related aspects of the information arts. Once past the user interface, analysis is able to expand to the formal organization of data, as well as the computational, semiotic, and cultural behavior that is expressed in the structural coupling of data to the environment in which it functions. The logistics required in dealing with the landscape through database logic necessarily involves the implementation of database logic in addition to the representation of database logic, and this is a pivotal issue that touches many of the other issues facing artists dealing with landscape as data. It is in the implementation of relational, object-oriented, object-relational, multidimensional and other database models where explorations of landscape data and its world might be expressed, allowed to self-express, or express in collaboration with human subjects; the user interface is secondary representation to the structure and organization of data. Indeed, it is not even clear that the technical organization of data is necessarily a strong predicate of user interface. This is demonstrated in the cultural realm of human-machinic interaction by the dogged reemergence of the command line interface (mostly thanks to Linux); even as many began to assume that the CLI was dead. Even the computer operating system formerly known best for its GUI Puritanism, the MacOS, is now actually a Unix OS called MacOSX, (it is really BSD [1] under the GUI covers), that for the first time makes a shell interface available to Mac users. The fact that database is often accessed, designed, and managed using both GUIs and CLIs indicates that the underlying data and various API layers are not necessarily bound to any particular aesthetic experience of database at the interface. [2] This is not to say that there is no coupling between these layers [3], nor is it to say that there is no 'database aesthetic' that is expressed as a visible or interfacial part of our culture. Rather than drive the analysis of database aesthetics away from the interface, the intention is to extend aesthetics down into at least the technical implementation of data, allowing the inclusion of data, its organization and possibly its inter-textual or extra-textual behaviors regardless of external intentionalities and semantics. Thus for artists working with landscape data, there are aesthetic correlates to the original question involving the strategic and tactical approaches that are necessary for dealing with the inherent uncertainty of mined/revealed relations amidst (or between) extremely large sets of geo-data organized logically and discretely, particularly in consideration of data with a formal basis in relational or multidimensional algebra. It is not clear that landscape as database art is best expressed through either the command line interface or graphical user interface in the first instance, (although I would never deny that it could be expressed in such a way). It is possible, and perhaps even likely, that computer artists working with landscape and database might avoid any computer mediated interface to their production altogether. There are other questions which I will treat as well, such as how the nature and conceptions of place are altered by database, and how the nature of being in place (the role of the narrative in place), is similarly altered. Answering these problems of database and landscape requires a great deal of work, most of which is honestly speculative at this time, and which can not be secured in this essay. But the reason to make art (and to write) is to understand, rather than because one already understands, (exploration not explication), so I ask the reader to pardon the dust as I construct a bridge between the precession of models, the semiotic and cultural context of database, and the formal technical logics of data that impinge upon the practice of database as landscape art. If I mistakenly include the Buenaventura River [4] flowing to the Pacific in my early maps, only at some later time to discover my initial anticipations evaporate in the Humboldt Sink, so be it. The Humboldt Sink may be adequately interesting for reasons other than transport to the Pacific. It is important to this analysis to reference certain philosophical notions that impinge upon and inform the cultural logic of late 20th and early 21st century art. These will be indexed but not detailed except as necessary to drive this analysis away from certain pitfalls. The first is the tradition of semiology, particularly the theoretical thread that emerged from narrative analysis dealing specifically with the aesthetic consequences of syntagm and paradigm. Another is the precession of simulacra, or matters of models of the real and their impact on, or replacement of, the real. Finally, there is the theory of abstract machines, or immanent models or attractors around which systems spontaneously organize their material manifestation. The first is largely influenced by Roland Barthes, the second derives primarily from Baudrillard, the latter from Deleuze, and his best reader, Manuel DeLanda. The pitfalls that I want to be very careful about are the clichs and metaphors that spin out of the discourse of the postmodern, which have been favored by artists and intellectuals in the 20th century. [5] Rather than limit analysis to conceptual models of nomadic ridicule, deconstruction of the text, copy-left cut and paste, or ironic criticism of cultural institutions, I instead seek an analysis that views the precession of models, abstract machines, and the technical logic of database as aspects of the actual that should be explored by artists [6] in the context of landscape. [next installment: Surveyor: Precession of models and landscape] [1] Berkeley System Distribution, a Unix OS developed in the 1970's by Bill Joy and others. http://www.freebsd.org/ [2] The historical influence of the hierarchical database as file system is noted, but the matter is of how it is visualized and implemented as an interactive system. For example GUI's vs Unix CLI commands such as ls, cd, and pwd, are very different aesthetically, even if both depend upon single-parent nodes for containment. [3] Refer to 2. [4] Fremont, John C. 1845, Report Of The Exploring Expedition To The Rocky Mountains In The Year 1842, And To Oregon And North California In The Years 1843-44. By Brevet Captain J.C. Fremont, Of The Topographical Engineers, Under The Orders Of Col. J.J. Abert, Chief Of The Topographical Bureau. Printed By Order Of The Senate Of The United States. page 196 [5] This is itself a nested clich. [6]For a related thesis, see Foster, Hal The Return of the Real, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Mute, issue 25, is out this week. Conceptually and volumetrically expanded, (involves more cartographic & artists' projects & has doubled the pages), this new bi-annual volume is phat. Articles on: WarChalking, the Artists' Placement Group and Ambient Culture and more. http://www.metamute.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 12.29.02 From: McKenzie Wark (mw35 AT nyu.edu) Subject: konrad becker review Konrad Becker, Tactical Reality Dictionary: Cultural Intelligence and Social Control, edition selene, Vienna, 2002 (distributed by Autonomedia) Reviewed by McKenzie Wark (mw35 AT nyu.edu) Konrad Becker -- a contributor to nettime since its earliest incarnations, offers this remarkable little lexicon as a field manual for constructing 'tactical' realities. These just might be the worm holes through which to wriggle out of the consensual hallucination of global corporate media domination, in this era when the front line has mutated "from cold war to code war." (11) The ontology animating the text takes as its guiding postulate that there is more to what is actual than what is real. "The human 3D world is embedded in 'n' dimensions, but what is out there feeding from our dimensional sub- domains?" (129) The virtual is foreclosed, flattened out, and a thin reality is presented as if it were all there is. This reality masks the existence of "living entities living off humans, eating brain." (81) The surplus potential of reality is restricted in the name of reproducing a normality that serves merely corporate interest. To the extent that information society can be said to exist, it exists as quite the opposite of the enlightening, emancipatory rhetoric in which it is usually shrouded. Becker's book is not about information as fact, information as "a myth filled with the landmarks of consensual hallucination." (68) Becker's starting point is the disturbing proposition that "humans possess the capacity to relinquish their autonomy." (52) Corporate designs on the communication vector aims to achieve precisely this. Autonomy means access to the construction of alternate realities; enslavement here means entrapment within a reality coercively defined and policed. As Becker says: "Production of wealth in the empire of signs is the reproduction of scarcity and the cyber-policed poverty of everything outside." (130) Becker's text works by turning the language of communications research against itself. He turns up the volume of its pseudo-scientific rhetoric so can hear the static of power. Most of the entries in this dictionary are successions of statements, such as: "perception is influenced by mental scenarios that establish the symbolic order." (9) Or: "Enforcing homogenization of social behavior patterns through comprehensive automatic classification of 'normality' is in the interest not only of large scale psychological operations or technologies of political control but also appealing for global mass marketing of consumer products." (21) What is interesting about this text is that it does not pretend to "speak truth to power". It dispenses altogether with the enlightenment ideology of debunking ideology. The struggle in Becker's terms is rather one of who controls the mechanisms defining truth and illusion. There is a whiff of Foucault here, but Foucault only examined 19th century discourses within which truth was produced. He did not tackle the master-discourse of the 20th century -- 'communication'. Writes Becker: "Belief and imagination construct reality, from the basic mechanisms of survival to the brain-stem controlled hit-and-run instinct and territorial behavior to the abstract symbolism of the neural impulses coded in mental images and underlying world views." (109) This reads not so much like a parody of communication discourse as a deadpan plagiarism. He is not out to debunk this language, but to repurpose its tools. "Because of limits in capacity to cope directly with the complexity of the world, the mind constructs simplified mental models of reality." (98) These statements read like outtakes from academic journals, military manuals or public relations pitch books -- three genres that may effectively have merged anyway. These three genres -- the academic, military and commercial aspects of communication research -- come together as corporate intelligence, which is "a means of protecting corporate power against democratic forces." (32) Intelligence is the key word here, in all its senses. "Intelligence is the virtual substitute for violence in the Information Society." (36) On the one hand, corporate intelligence; on the other, cultural intelligence. The difference between them is not in who possesses the truth, but in the techniques each deploys for the construction of realities. One is based on a hierarchy of exchange values; the other on a proliferation of use values. Becker follows closely the post-enlightenment turn in corporate intelligence, which may promote 'democracy' as an official ideology, but is mainly in the business of exploiting the non- rational attributes of the citizen-subject. "Individuals are subject to very consistent and predictable errors in judgment. These errors of reason are not due to a lack of expertise or intelligence but are embedded in the fundamental mechanisms by which we process information." (29) The struggle is over whether these apparent shortcomings in the human organism's processing of information can be exploited to subjugate it, or could be the quirks and particularities out of which the virtuality of the world might be actualized. With corporate intelligence, "the aim is alertness reduction, programmed confusion and flattening of the mind." (44) In the cultural studies tradition, much is made of the ordinary capacity to interpret dominant texts otherwise. But this does not take into account the emerging hegemony of interpretative resources. It is not a world view that dominates, but a particular machinery for making world views. Attacking a dominant worldview is not the same as dismantling its means of production. The tantalizing possibility of the Tactical Reality Dictionary is that it points the way to this more pressing task. Becker speaks of dominant media processes with a vectoral language of flows: "The News are the waves and ripples generated by fundamental currents in the deep sea of unconscious agreements, reinforcing myths and conditioned reflexes." (105) And again: "The dramas of mythological soap operas and their strange attractors generate self-sustaining patterns." (105) These are the techniques for the reproduction of reality as repetition, much as Debord spoke of the spectacle as a timeless refutation of history. In a nod to the plebian nature of genuine recalcitrance, Becker notes that "if you cannot read you are less vulnerable to propaganda" and hence "intellectuals are the best targets of Perception Management." This is of course "due to their implanted feeling of being immune." (111) The information society works its delusions on the informed, not on the uninformed. Those I have elsewhere called the 'infoproles' have the good sense to ignore the shrill righteousness emanating from elite American colleges as much as the exhortations of fundamentalist preachers. The basic principle of maintaining coercive reality is for Becker almost a physiological one: "It takes more information and data processing to recognize an unexpected phenomenon than an expected one." (100) Once a society has outlived the founding violence with which the vector is inserted into the body politic, it requires not much more than coercive persuasion to maintain the illusion that it was ever thus. Hence perhaps the mutual incomprehension between the overdeveloped world, where a selective reality has become normalized to the point of boredom, and the underdeveloped world, where it is still being established by force. Yet one should not underestimate the extent to which the colonization of territory has always been simultaneously a matter of seizing the means of producing its representation. As Becker muses, "with hindsight, whole empires could turn out to be products of cultural engineering." (10) The emergent empire of our times seems to have a particular affinity with "the synthetic representation of the world in a system of game rules" (123) The globe is being produced by a Playstation empire which assigns relative and relational values to any and everything. This is a world in which "the dammed are the left-out, suppressed and excluded data. Their graves lie at the cross roads of Trivia." (125) The difficulty Becker's text raises is in conceptualizing the difference between what is merely a variation on the same old coercive reality and what might open a line of escape from it. He offers this deadpan sentence -- straight from astroturf training manuals -- as an indication of the problem: "Deactivation of a social activist group is achieved by a three step strategy of isolating the radicals, cultivating and education the idealists into realists and finally co- opting the realists." (33) One thinks of all the well meaning folk in NGOs one meets, and the rhetorics by which they justify their compromises.... As Becker says, "pragmatic realists and opportunists are manipulated through trade-offs and perceptions of 'partial victories'." (33) The consensual hallucination of official reality even has its own zealots, who critique everyday appearances that fall short of the official social norms in its own terms, and pretend this is a species of radicalism. One can recognize these thought reformers by their procedures: "demands for confession, unconditional agreement to ideology, manipulation of language into clichés." (24) These are the techniques of those who want a token presence within the current consensual reality, rather than turning over the means of its making to the people it claims to represent. Rather than confronting the illusion of reality with the reality of illusion, Becker counsels a different strategy: "reality as a normative hallucination is the virtual prison system of a social organization. Individuals who flee from these representations and concepts of the world have more choices than those who cannot escape the straight-jackets of imposed reality." (53) Let a thousand realities bloom. As Becker notes, "most of the early hopes of emacipatory practice in a society based on information exchange seem to have vanished." (13) Information is not transparent or neutral, and while we may wonder whether it actually exists, even the illusion of its existence is a powerful effect. What would it mean to dispense with the reality of information? It's a difficult line of thought. As Becker notes, "the difficulty is not in acquiring new perceptions or new ideas, but that already established perceptions are difficult to change." (17) And so we are stuck with information, as it is. Perhaps we can figure out how to deploy the illusion of its existence differently. Says Becker: "Humans need to find ways to escape the vicious circle of forced work for wages and imposed leisure, to escape symbolic dominance and cultural entertainment, the 'reality' of everyday life and the flatlands of binary logic." (34) There is hope. "The movement of hedonistic escape from materialism is a global language of zero work ethics in full e-fact. Towards the united international hedonistic diversification, critical escapism will dance at the grave of ordinary pan-capitalism." (35) If the vector can be used to orchestrate and conduct flows, perhaps it can also be used to extend the dimensions of existence of that more autonomous, embodied movement that appears here in the figure of the dance. Like Critical Art Ensemble, Becker turns one edge of his rhetorical creation against actually existing art practice. "In a conflict of resistance to zombie culture it is understood that traditional art can no longer be justified as an activity to which one could honorably or usefully devote oneself." (36) He proposes an image of "the artist as a reality hacker" (36) The artist does not construct (or even deconstruct) images of the world, but constructs worlds of images. In place of the artist, one might imagine what Becker calls cultural intelligence, which "gathers, evaluates and processes meta-information about the foundations of information based society." (38) Cultural intelligence might be no less committed to deception and ambiguity than corporate intelligence, but toward other ends. Evading surveillance for Becker's reality hackers is a matter of "avoiding anything a computer would find interesting." (39) These "hedonistic engineers explore escape routes from an anxiously bored society knowing that speed and deception secretly free from imposed values." (53) The goal is the production of "autonomous neuro-stimulation zones" (131) Becker sometimes couches statements in the political rhetoric of the times, but with a somewhat different purpose: "A key ecological issue concerns the preservation and increase of the use value for the public at large and the non- commercial properties of information as opposed to the exchange value." (45) Or: "Digital human rights are based on the understanding of communication as motor of civilization and a base of individuality as well as society." (46) Becker rethinks the ecological for a world that has passed beyond second nature to third nature, and human rights in a world which hovers on the precipice between the posthuman and the inhuman. In what may be a nod toward the kind of art- practice of groups like The Yes Men, Becker notes that: "The nets are used by cultural activists as meta-data tools according to a new artistic tradition of inspired interpretation of data within a panopticon of commodified world views." (115) By which we might take the Yes Men not as a critical negation of dominant ideologies, but as an instance of the autonomous production of a parallel reality -- one in which Dow Chemical really does apologize for the mistakes of its subsidiaries. One might ask, in the gap between these world, which is less possible. All we know is that "What is 'real' is not certain, but what is certain is not 'real'." (109) The most invigorating aspect of this book is not its playful paranoia about communication as a power of constraint, but its joyful insistence that there are more dimensions to this reality that the impoverished three we are told exhaust it. As Becker puts it: "Lock picking the future requites multi-dimensional maps of the world for new exits and safe havens in hyperspace." (110) http://www.selene.at http://www.autonomedia.org http://www.t0.or.at _____________________________________________________ McKenzie Wark, Dept of English, SUNY Albany http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warktext.html + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this free publication, please consider making a contribution within your means at http://rhizome.org/support. Checks and money orders may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. 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