Date:         Sun, 29 Sep 2002 02:01:20 -0400
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: why codework
To: WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA

why codework


wary of any art movement tending towards genre, not that the two are
simultaneous or even related. there are limits to codework; on one hand
the code itself, on the other the process the code sends - what - through
- text/image/subject/object/monad/desire - think of it as retinal
filtering - that is the isolation, production, and naming of objects
within the continuum of the world - it's both structure and generative
process - the latter tending towards ontology.

what is, is the domain of production - the input, to the extent that it is
text/image etc. - i.e. not generated within the program itself - is
parasitic, the third term within the communication process - on one hand
traditional 'content' - on the other - 'noise' within the system that
modifies and is modified by the output.

i tend to think of this in terms of two large-scale operations - that of
consciousness and its relation to inputting and outputting - fuzzy and
rough domains at best - not a behavior analysis - but one stressing the
interpretation and phenomenology of consciousness within the filter -
seeing this as the way the world is, that is to say the relationship of
consciousness to the world is vis-a-vis formal and informal systems in
which filtering/language produces discrete elements in relation to
consciousness on one hand and the world on the other -

and then again - the second large-scale operation - that of the universe -
plasma, virtual particles - the disruptions and collusion/collocation of
structures - momentary buildups, impediments - codework at the limits in
other words connecting, a connector among others, between self and cosmos
- without descent into the mu of zazen for example - or ma, space/interval
- looking at correlated particles for example in relation to, but not
always, the space between them -

so that there is a production of meaning, the gleaning from across all of
this - structure, process, the parasitic - it's the production that is
also an inhabitation and interpretation by consciousness - it's the
situation of being-human in the world - it's worlding itself -

at least this is how it seems to me, the movement-genre is irrelevant -
what's important is the exploration of consciousness and the relationship
among articulated entities in the world - there's something of cognitive
psychology to this (but messier) and something of art as well (but more
exact, almost uncomfortable, diacritical) -

not a movement or genre but the loose domain or pooling of the confluence
of structure and content (in the traditional sense), subject and object
(in the traditional sense), i and not-i (in the traditional sense) -
dichotomy itself - or the very nature of distinction - the sheffer stroke
or its dual for example as the basis - neither a nor b - not both a and b
- already tending towards the quantum mechanics of superimposition and the
phenomenology of the gesture -


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