I only managed to take three. But the first one is of a panel I attended on anonymous and viral modes of political engagement. As you can imagine, the Q&A of that session was, well, slightly weird. The second is the main building where Transmediale usually takes place, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt; a building where the auditorium is suspended at the top of the building.
That’s what someone said to me earlier today, when I talked about the importance of Greenberg. Not unexpected of course – but it makes no sense to be ignorant about him. When I asked for the reason behind this opinion, the smug self-satisfaction of ‘you don’t understand’ and ‘we’re past this’ comes to the fore; the rolling of the eyes, the satisfaction of defence in group discussion and so on…
Well ignore me then. I don’t defend Greenberg to be radical for the sake of being some sort of radical hipster – there is a genuine applicability there, even now in computation. In short; ‘Context’ is not a particularly helpful way of articulating novelty in expression.
Misconceptions can be avoided if you just read the material and be honest about it. Incidentally, the same can be said of Wolfram in fact: everyone who vaguely knows his work has in reality hardly read the 1,200 page book from cover to cover. “Wolfram harbours an idealist agenda of religious metaphysics”. Yeah, he kinda does, but that’s a really bad reading that understands one aspect and assumes everything else follows it. Same with Greenberg.
Actually read it please – Do it. Spend the time. Learn things. Be surprised.
(Someone actually asked me earlier exactly how much time one should put by to read and digest Wolfram’s NKS in full. I’ve been reading it since 2004, but realistically… 4 months I’d say. 1 month for the main text – the next three for the notes).
I’ll write a longer response to Harman’s keynote last night – but to give you flavour of the festival here’s a neat video of what’s going on this year.
The first guy is Morten Riis from Aarhus, by the way. Fantastic project.
Ok – it’s time that I updated everyone on the last two days.
So transmediale is going well. There’s a nice vibe going on, as I expected everyone is in good sprits and enjoying the festival events. There are A LOT of people here, pretty much 1000 maybe even 2000+ are expected over the course of the five days so its a lot bigger than I thought. Lots of great projects too. There’s a guy giving away all his stuff on the bottom floor of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, in exchange for attention to his lecture on Vimeo, which seems interesting although the point (or lack thereof) eludes me. The main centrepiece is from Ben Woodenson’s called - Health and Safety violation No.36, which can deliberately cause harm to the participant (you have to sign a form before you can touch it). There are signs everywhere saying ‘Vorsicht!” and “Elektrozaun!”.
Along with Magda and Andy from our research group, we moderated a panel of PhD students and artists yesterday and it was terrific. The group students talked about their work and research throughout the day. The next generation of digital art is in safe hands in my opinion. There’s enough charge, anger and wit to create a number of long lasting projects. Magda and Andy set the agenda for talking about the relationship between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ and the functional, yet now debilitating role of institutionalised ‘research’. Does art only have value when it’s backed by research or should we organise our own structures which independent value? The students had some great responses to this – and didn’t shy away from hard answers.
Rather unexpectedly I spent the morning and early afternoon with Graham, which was a pleasure. We visited the Hamburger Bahnhof to see Tomas Saraceno’s exhibition (plus a bit of Beuys and Roman Opalka) and talked substantially about the role of art, philosophy, even computer science. Rather refreshingly we agree on a number of key areas; we particularly dislike the unnecessary hatred of Greenberg and Fried – besides the usual philosophical issues. He has now set me the (difficult but enjoyable) task of producing a list of artists who a. have had the most impact and b. who have created artworks with the greatest qualities since 1950 or 1960. Impact does not always lead to quality, so the distinction is acute. (Actually I’m beginning to think Opalka on the quality side personally speaking – maybe Florian Slotawa too.)
What’s nice about Graham is that he’s honest about what he says. And that’s important. You can’t just pretend that you have an answer to everything, or you think you can explain one through an opinion “because” you’re an academic. These things take time and work.
Not sure if I’m staying in the same Hotel Graham’s staying in – (well it’s the same chain for sure) – but yes the fire is nice in the lobby and very welcome in my room. Especially as it’s minus 7 outside.
It’s peer reviewed leftist newspaper time again, courtesy of DARC at Aarhus. HERE’s the blurb and PDF.
I can’t convey how staggeringly brilliant this project is – we talk about the capabilities of blogging in academia and instant access, but this conveys instant information in different, perhaps more immediate way through the ground roots of paper distribution.
But what I didn’t realise is that there would be a Speculations and continent. editors: The Aesthetics of Academic Practice session. Echoing Michael Austin’s recent post, I can’t wait to meet both him and Thomas Gokey for the first time ( I met Paul last year at Nottingham). Four Fifth’s of the Speculation team together – fantastic.
Ok – it’s time that I updated everyone on the last two days.
