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  • place: Bremen, Germany

Paragraphs on Computer Art, Past and Present by Prof. (emer.) Dr. Frieder Nake

[Ed: My old friend Frieder’s meditations on computer art are foundational as per his inimitable style of thought and expression. I am honored to present this text here on the tech-no-mad blog, though the blog platform itself is suffering computability problems of its own, my apologies! See also Frieder’s precise and quite humorous presentation on the history of computer art at eyeo in 2014.]

Revised version (2011) of a paper of the same title that appeared in: Nick Lambert, Jeremy Gardiner, Francesca Franco (eds.): CAT 2010. Ideas before their time. Connecting the past and present in computer art. London: British Computer Society 2010. p. 55-63. Appears here by permission of the author.
Sol LeWitt published his “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” in Artforum, June 1967. It became an influential theoretical text on art of the twentieth century. It played the role of a manifesto even though it appeared when its topic – concept over matter – had already existed for about a decade. Digital (or algorithmic) art had had its first exhibitions in 1965. It seems it never produced a manifesto, with the exception, perhaps, of Max Bense’s “Projects of generative aesthetics” (1965, in German). Since computer art is a brother of conceptual art, it is justified in this late manifesto to borrow the style of the old title.

1 There are no images now without traces of digital art. Digital Art exists as computer art, algorithmic art, net art, web art, software art, interactive art, computational art, generative art, and more. When it made its first appearances, in Stuttgart and New York, the name “computer art” was thrown against art history and into the faces of art critics. It was a proud name and a bad one. “Algorithmic art” would have been the correct term. The superficial “computer art” disguised the revolutionary fact: the algorithmic principle had entered the world of art.

2 The algorithmic principle is the principle of computability. Whatever exists in the domain of computability exists insofar as it is computable. Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and others had in the 1930s saved mathematics as the only discipline of the human mind that can say clearly what it says. Those heroes had clarified the concept of computability. They had thus created a new basis for mathematics. Soon after, the computer appeared as the machine to turn science into engineering. There had, of course, before been devices for mechanical calculation, but no computing automaton. more “Paragraphs on Computer Art, Past and Present by Prof. (emer.) Dr. Frieder Nake”

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

workflow, capital, and creative action

Then there is the concept of “workflow” in digital production: it refers to the establishment of an input-processing-output sequence that navigates the many competing and conflicting variables introduced by the various hardwares/softwares involved. Some variables may be constrained with capital, others only with repetitive experience and feedback loops. Most variables are the effect of widely imposed standards introduced by corporate entities. more “workflow, capital, and creative action”

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sliding scale versus spectral range

I often use the metaphor of “sliding scale” to indicate a situation that can be described as having two end points and a continuum of blended conditions between those two points. The image came about first when talking about the different social relations indicated by the two end points “network” and “hierarchy” — and how any particular social system can be characterized as sitting somewhere along the line between those two (theoretical!) end points. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the geometric linearity of such a metaphoric illustration, though, as is relies on a limited Cartesian model. And, indeed, in an open system there are no end points to any particular description system. So, does “spectrum” OR “spectral range” perform an adequate substitution?

To speak of or to “re-present” an open system is to close the system. Language and re-presentation is a process of reduction and modeling of reality (where reality is the open system). The question of the adequacy of representation is core in this Age of Data Mining. The challenge of rendering digital data into human-readable analog information that can be effectively interpreted will always be the limiting factor in any data-driven decision-making process.

Back to the spectrum question: it is foundational to identify the (multi)variables that are of interest or crucial to what is being examined. A spectral space allows for this, but also allows for degrees of complexity that are greater than can be sensibly interpreted. This is where intuition, not analysis, comes into play. Forget artificial intelligence (what has intelligence brought us, anyway?); forget fast-Fourier-transformations (except in the case that they are generated through meat-space neural cascades; better to use a manual quasi-Gaussian blur by squinting and whatever analog output you can manage)… argh; the question of interpretation of what the spectral model presents is another challenge altogether.

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  • author: Udo Noll

Surfing the Gray Line

A sonopoetic exploration of space, sound and radio by Udo Noll

The fiery aether, which has no weight, formed the vault of heaven, flashing upwards to take its place in the highest sphere. The air, next to it in lightness, occupied the neighboring regions. Earth, heavier than these, attracted to itself the grosser elements, and sank down under its own weight… [1]

This aether, the upper atmosphere, begins some eighty to a hundred kilometers above the surface of the earth, where the homosphere ends. Here, above the protective ozone layer, the air separates into its individual components; the physical and chemical conditions are dramatically altered by radiation and the reduction in gravitational force. In the cosmogonies of antiquity order springs from chaos, the weightless is separated from the weighty, upper from lower, light from dark. The separation and differentiation of matter gives rise to the spheres: direction and space. The aether is breathed by the gods; to humans are apportioned the denser layers of air underneath. In the resonance chamber between the earth and the spheres of the fixed stars, the movement of the celestial spheres produces a harmonious sound, symphōnía, whose echo through the ages is still discernible in the string and quantum loop theories of today. more “Surfing the Gray Line”

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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

analogic lies

Man is the only organism known to use both the analogic and the digital modes of communication. The significance of this is still very inadequately understood, but can hardly be overrated. On the one hand there can be no doubt that man communicates digitally. In fact, most, if not all, of his civilized achievement would be unthinkable without his having evolved digital language. This is particularly important for the sharing of information about objects and for the time-binding function of the transmission of knowledge. And yet there exists a vast area where we rely almost exclusively on analogic communication, often with very little change from the analogic inheritance handed down to us from our mammalian ancestors. This is the area of relationship. Based on Tinbergen (1953) and Lorenz (1952), as well as his own research, Bateson (1955) has shown that vocalizations, intention movements, and mood signs of animals are analogic communications by which they define the nature of their relationships, rather than making denotative statements about objects. Thus, to take one of his examples, when I open the refrigerator and the cat comes, rubs against my legs, and mews, this does not mean “I want milk” — as a human being would express it — but invokes a specific relationship, “Be mother to me,” because such behavior is only observed in kittens in relation to adult cats, and never between two grownup animals. Conversely, pet lovers often are convinced that their animals “understand” their speech. What the animal does understand, needless to say, is certainly not the meaning of the words, but the wealth of analogic communication that goes with speech. Indeed, wherever relationship is the central issue of communication, we find that digital language is almost meaningless. This is not only the case between animals and between man and animal, but in many other contingencies in human life, e.g., courtship, love, succor, combat, and, of course, in all dealings with very young children or severely disturbed mental patients. Children, fools, and animals have always been credited with particular intuition regarding the sincerity or insincerity of human attitudes, for it is easy to profess something verbally, but difficult to carry a lie into the realm of the analogic.

Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J.H. & Jackson, D.D., 1967. Some Tentative Axioms of Communication. In Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

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Summary

The systems process appears to this writer as a continuing specification of ignorance and the associated activity of remedying this situation. A more conventional view is that this process is an activity of a number of people who individually and collectively engage in a continuing examination of problems and their related objectives, the generation of alternative ways and means of reaching these objectives, and the selection of the most attractive on a cost effective basis, hopefully tempered throughout by operational judgment and some intuition. The output is usually a report that recommends a specific course of action to responsible management, or it may be a document that recommends a selected design or engineering structure over others that have been considered. From an overall point of view, the systems process is one that enables those carrying it on and those receiving its output to narrow the areas of the application of judgment and to focus more clearly on the basic issues involved. As in all human activity, this process cannot be substituted for direct confrontation with the details of the subject nor for the hard work necessary to expose these details. One thing is certain, the application of the systems process educates and sharpens the perceptions of those who apply it.

Hopkins, C., 1972. The Systems Process. OTP White paper, Washington, D.C.

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Jobs

In one hand, this book, “Steve Jobs”:

Which explores on the surface the life of the Apple CEO. It’s a journalistic book, plenty of sources, quotes, inside interviews, but it lacks much depth (for example, the following quote which suggests the extent of Job’s sensitivity or intuitions around creative collaboration, but there is no development or digging into his real sourcing for such ideas). Not much to say about it. Having worked with Apple computers for more than 25 years, it’s good to know a bit more about the man who constructed the corporate setting where all these machines were designed. What now shall his disciples and collaborators do, in his absence?

Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.

So he had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. “If a building doesn’t encourage that, you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity,” he said. “So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.” The front doors and main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium, the café and the mailboxes were there, the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it, and the six-hundred-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” Lasseter recalled. “I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”

Isaacson, W., 2011. Steve Jobs : a biography, Simon & Schuster.

This juxtaposed with All watched over by machines of loving grace (another Adam Curtis series on BBC (title from a collection of poetry by Richard Brautigan)).

It is fashionable to suggest that cyber-space is some island of the blessed where people are free to indulge and express their individuality, this is not true. I have seen many people spill out their emotions—their guts—online and I did so myself until I began to see that I had commodified myself.

Commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money value. In the 19th Century, commodities were made in factories, by workers who were mostly exploited. But I created my interior thoughts as commodities for the corporations that owned the board I was posting to—like Compuserve or AOL—and that commodity was sold onto other consumer entities as entertainment.

Cyber-space, is a black hole; it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it, as an emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion—and we are getting lost in the spectacle. — Carmen Hermosillo

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for college students

A piece of advice: seek out the best profs. Once you land at your school, ask around, look over any “outstanding teaching award” lists, online for advice, look around to see what students are producing interesting work (find out their teachers). good teaching / great teaching will push you into the indeterminate space of being-here-now. it is at that moment you are open to the Unknown and that openness is a state to cultivate no matter how maddeningly intense it might feel.

granted, I know this is a boot-strapping situation. knowing a good prof when you encounter one: what’s that mean?

hmm. well. listen to small interior voices. I say small in that they are not the loudest, usually, except in a transitory way — you might wake up with a particularly boisterous one on a particular day, it’s probably good to give some passing attention to it. but what I call ‘voices’ here are not linguistically-defined, they are the resonances of intuition which are not reductive abstractions as language or protocol are, they are pre-linguistic. so, technically, they are not ‘voices’ at all. or even aural/sonic. they are merely ‘vibrashuns.’ got it? it’s where you find yer mojo. with yer mojo operating properly (as a transmission-reception mode), you will be able to suss out the best profs, eh?

stay tuned (who stay’s tuned anyway, these days?) for more. [noting, sadly, the redundancy of this mode of writing anyway]

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affects and intentions

The idea comes that I can place different narratives and sonifications in the aporee context, making a global mapping of ideas mixed with sounds mixed with voices. But somehow this seems flat. Not that the platform lacks some aesthetic appeal, but the tendency would be to continue the same old process of archive-building (with the same old criteria of acquisition of material). Or, I thought about making a performative series in the Speakers Corner in the Domain. Still, the best idea to this moment is the one where I would simply engage with this material with one Other, expanding on it, presenting it in a dialogic setting, and reproducing that. Or this dialogic situation as a live performative undertaking with an audience.
more “affects and intentions”

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  • place: en route Aachen, Germany - Brussels, Belgium

migrations

a long day yesterday riding the rails from Kiel to Aachen, back into familiar spaces again there. a really nice but far too short visit with Günter, Christina, and Manon — who is now as tall as her mother! last time I saw her she was just a little child, maybe eight years ago?! lovely child. so, hanging out talking about books, art, life, music, so nice to re-connect after all this time.

re-creating the passage of time. young children grow up.

a leisurely breakfast with Christina, and she then drove me to the Hauptbahnhof for my train through Liege and on to Brussels Midi, a short walk to the hotel, where Dirk has faxed a three-day plan of meetings with a variety of artists, artist’s collectives, and educators working in that fuzzy space of new media. my room is not ready, so I stash my bag and start wandering towards the first agenda item: a round-table (albeit around a rectangular table) with two of the principles of LA[bau] — a laboratory for architecture and urbanism — Manuel Abendroth and Els Vermang.

a nice lunch (those dang baguette-sandwiches are always so crunchy that they cut the skin in my mouth at first, I forget to remember this and take care, flipping the sandwich over so that the smoother side of the baguette is up). but mmmm. on the way to lunch, however, a strange event. walking towards a building under reconstruction, a scaffolding is being set up, maybe four stories high at the moment. I catch the eye of a guy who is stacking parts to be hauled up on a cable winch, nothing unusual there. I am looking at the structure which looks somehow unstable. I decide to walk off the sidewalk instead of under the structure. I am looking up at the structure, calculating it’s condition. a pass it by, return to the sidewalk and hear a clang, then a meter in front of me a wrench, a heavy one, smashes to the ground. there is a group of 4 guys walking towards me about the same distance from the landing point as I am. faugh! how weird is that. I had the prior intuition something was wrong with the situation, and I can’t really say that the slight detour I made brought me closer or further away from my head intersecting with this tool which must have fallen from around 15 meters up. far enough up that is could easily have killed me or those other people.

so the rest of the day, I am watching things more carefully, but what difference does it make? if you look one way, you miss what is coming the other.

at any rate, they outlined their program and a couple of the main projects they have undertaking recently. tough to cross over my lack of background in architecture — it has always been a distant field of interest, but seldom the opportunity to crack the conceptual world that it is embedded in. the one time jumping in on a final critique with some of EJ’s students at Boulder was interesting — along with a surficial awareness of functionality in housing design — but does not provide any preparation for the contemporary conceptual spaces of inquiry. it does seem that innovative, and especially decorative design elements in architecture are about something. but the connection between the about-ness and what I would understand as the reason for the existence of architecture is not clear to me. but this is perhaps my own weakness combined with a deep frustration at the frequent appearance of non-functional design in built structures and in objects, for that matter.

at any rate, their work shows the presence of superior economic capital, and the consequent high production values which is nice. professional. sleek, designer, urban.

been in the desert too long, or, not long enough.

Crabbit (cra-bit) dialect, chiefly Scot. – adj. 1. ill-tempered, grumpy, curt, disagreeable; in a bad mood [esp. in the morning]. (often used in ‘ken this, yer a crabbit get, so ye are’). n. by their nature or temperament conveys an aura of irritability. — drink coaster at Christina & Günter’s place

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  • place: en route, Heathrow - Stepney-Limehouse, London, England

Stepney

now it’s the next day (of arrival) after all the delays, and the contorted efforts to sleep in a seated cattle-class configuration. Heathrow immigrations takes a long time, baggage claim, no problem by the time I got there, change some money, get an Oyster card, get on the Piccadilly line headed East. senses begin to wake up to the pleasures of movement, travel: seeing, talking to Others. change at Baron’s Court to the District line getting out at Aldgate East, try to find the bus stop. for a moment, not trusting intuition, and get into a conversation with an Irish chap with a small news-stand. asking for the bus-stop, but him only interested in my destination “that’s a new’n by me, Senrab (Street)…” it’s chilly and damp. nothing new. slightly cooler that California, but not by much at all. the driver nods at the request to drop me at the Marion Richardson school, before the Troxy Bingo Hall on Commercial Road. not far from the Stephen Hawking Special School. no where to stand on those buses when toting a bag — always in the way of folks getting off and on. aLight and make the short haul to Senrab and neighbor Christiane’s house a few doors down, she comes to the door, gets the keys and an envelope for me, and I am aware of two little girls crouched at the top stairs watching my appearance. back down the block — Maya and Jez, room-mates of JB’s are home, though, so I hadn’t needed to get the key. They show me in/around and Jez makes some tea and we chat for awhile. great to have a home to enter, when landing in a foreign land. I get the sitting room for a bedroom, comfy. with a view out to a garden, lotsa brick walls, and what looks to be a factory out back, converted to a school or so. beautiful building, I watch it in the night and when dawn comes.

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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Cleveland Hopkins 1910 – 2003

Dad passes this evening. after this long struggle, and a long life. code blue, Janet calls, racing into the hospital. Nancy and Mom there, holding his hands. His heart couldn’t bear more time here. I am just home from school, exhausted. Stop what I am doing, and concentrate on a slender thread of consciousness. Light some incense. Crumble some sage harvested for just this purpose from the depths of Sand Canyon off the Yampa, press it deep into the palms, smelling the released sweetness. Burn some, the smoke mixing with the incense. An intuitive impulse says “write the time now.” on a 3×5 card, I write the time, 6:52. A call comes ten minutes later, he has passed. As birth is the surfacing, death is the submerging of soul back into its own, its transitory place. time shivers, small waves move outward, and the bardo of passing opens. Unmeasured intuition and connection. Still small voices, suspension of the material presence.
more “Cleveland Hopkins 1910 – 2003”