Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2002 01:44:51 +0100
To: o-o@konf.lt
Subject: an artefact for interfiction IX (arteFaction! errors in/as media. Kassel, November 15th-17th, 2002)
From: mi_ga@o-o.lt


copy&paste commands, or: how machines make art


I beg your pardon for my English. It is not perfect yet. Today I want to
say a few words about errors in/as media. These thoughts are rather
artistic than theoretical. At first, I would like to quote William S.
Burroughs. His ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION begins as follows:

"In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained
one of the mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was
flesh we are told. In the beginning of what exactly was this beginning
word? In the beginning of WRITTEN history."
 
In 'GARDEN OF EDEN', he further elaborates on his theory that the
written word was a virus which presumed the spoken word. So the written
word got declared a basis of the further development of consciousness.

My thoughts and reasonings about errors in/as media are related to
computing machines whose functional basis is the written word.
Computers allow easy copy&paste operations.

They allow us to compute correct tasks as well as intentionally
misleading ones.  Exactly at this point, new media become interesting for
artistic expression.

I therefore would like to turn the title of this panel upside down
because that shows better what it's about. The title should be: 

Media in/as Errors

In other words, I regard media as activities which produce imperfection.
If we try to follow the history of art, we see a striving for
perfection. Similar striving can be observed in other fields. My concern
are the computing machines which these days we call PCs.  With that
word, we mean the tool that delivers a perfect output. But one can
observe as well that the machine is very frequently being used to
produce uselessness. Or the machines don't function as we wish. In some
cases it might happen that information disappears.  Francis Hunger's
lecture, which you just heard, was about a phenomenon that can hardly
originate in a sane consciousness, black holes in the Internet. Another
phenomenon that should be mentioned here is the realm of the virus.
Such artists as jodi (www.jodi.org) or jimpunk (www.jimpunk.com)
use the copy&paste function to emphasize the realm of the virus. What
they produce later looks like unconscious computations or disrupted
programs. How do we use the tools which new media offer us? If you
beomce a permanent user of these tools, the result is

Automatization

The artworks produced by machines often don't fit into the modes of
perception of human beings. They should be prepared to understand the
output. The best way is acquired experience with these tools, and
self-automatization.

Open. Cut. Move the cursor. Copy and paste. Or simply paste. Turn it
around. Resize it. Copy. Open. Select all. Delete. Paste. Paste. Move
the cursor to the beginning. Type: #!/usr/bin/perl.  Press delete. Type
a colon, 'w', 'q' and '!'. Go back. Type Perl [filename]. Press ctrl+c.
Open. File. Correct it. Turn everything by 180 degrees. Add mor sources.
Errors. Comment a few lines. Change the values. Open Google. Search.
Download. Copy and Paste. Correct. Think. Add some occasional commands.
Add some replaced commands. Add sendmail. Save. Play. Copy and paste. Or
Cut and paste. Transform. Flip horizontally. Transform. Flip vertically.
Turn it to right. Highlight. Cut it out. Paste. Turn it to left. Copy.
Paste. Wait. Wait. Correct. Save.

The Perl compiler will probably return the error 505. But if we tried to
make ourselves conscious of the above operations, we could produce some
interesting results. We get, for example, very beautiful forms like in
concrete poetry. Sometimes, the programs we have written will actually
work. I now would like to show you one of the works of trashconnection
the title of which is

content-type
(You can find it under http://content-type.trashconnection.com)

The program looks as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# neverending search for the highest number
# created for the future
print "content-type: text/html\n\n";
for ( $a=int(rand 1000000); $a>0; $b=$a*$a+$b ) {
print "<font face=courier>$a\n$b\n";
}

This program has been written with an intentional error so that the Perl
compiler calls up a variable entity $n in an endless loop. This variable
entity $b is a number which gets added and multiplied with itself. No
computing machine could terminate the program since of course there is
no infinite number. The program runs like a written virus. The first
randomly generated number, one out of one million, becomes the trigger
of an infinite chain. So an ever-new artwork appears on the screen of
the computer.

With this work I would like to make a full stop to my description
somewhere between the unconscious machinery and conscious creation...

Thank you.

p____________o____________s_____________t
a       r       c       h       i       v       e   http://www.o-o.lt/post


[Translation from German by Florian Cramer]