<nettime-ann> [the] xxxxx [reader] launch 6 october

[m <m@1010.co.uk>]

.

x____

[the] xxxxx [reader]

Published by xxxxx in association with OpenMute

Launch 6 October 2006 8.30pm MetaMute, Unit 9, The Whitechapel Centre, 85
Myrdle Street, London E1 1HQ


xxxxx substance and software

Hal Abelson, Erich Berger, Shu Lea Cheang, Florian Cramer, Yves
Degoyon, Leif Elggren, Simon Ford, Olga Goriunova, Paul Graham, Graham
Harwood, Stewart Home, Martin Howse, Jonathan Kemp, Friedrich Kittler,
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Aymeric Mansoux, Bruno Marchal, Armin
Medosch, Anthony Moore, Peter Norvig, Jeff Prideaux, Thomas de
Quincey, Otto Roessler, socialfiction.org, Gerald J. Sussman, Julie
Sussman, Oswald Wiener

http://xxxxx.1010.co.uk

xxxx_


xxxxx proposes a radical, new space for artistic exploration, with
essential contributions from a diverse range of artists, theorists,
and scientists. Combining intense background material, code listings,
screenshots, new translation, [the] xxxxx [reader] functions as both
guide and manifesto for a thought movement which is radically opposed
to entropic contemporary economies.

xxxxx traces a clear line across eccentric and wide ranging texts
under the rubric of life coding which can well be contrasted with the
death drive of cynical economy with roots in rationalism and
enlightenment thought. Such philosophy, world as machine, informs its
own deadly flipside embedded within language and technology. xxxxx
totally unpicks this Hiroshimic engraving, offering a dandyish
alternative by way of the deep examination of software and substance.

Life coding is primarily active, subsuming deprecated psychogeography
in favour of acute wonderland technology, wary of any assumed
transparency. Texts such as Endonomadology, a transcript from
celebrated biochemist and chaos theory pioneer Otto E. Roessler who
features heavily throughout this intense volume, make plain the
sadistic nature and active legacy of rationalist thought. At the same
time, through the science of endophysics, a physics from the inside
rigorously examined here, a delicate theory of the world as interface
is proposed.

xxxxx is very much concerned with the joyful elaboration of a new
real; software-led propositions which are active and constructive in
eviscerating contemporary culture. xxxxx embeds Perl Routines to
Manipulate London, by way of software artist and Mongrel Graham
Harwood, a Universal Dovetailer in the Lisp programming language from
AI researcher Bruno Marchal rewriting the universe as code, and self
explanatory Pornographic Coding from plagiarist and author Stewart
Home and code art guru Florian Cramer. Software is treated as magical,
electromystical, contrasting with the tedious GUI desktop applications
and user-led drudgery expressed within a vast ghost-authored
literature which merely serves to repeat over and again the demands of
industry and economy. Key texts, which well explain the magic and
sheer art of programming for the absolute beginner are published here.

Software subjugation is made plain within the very title of media
theorist Friedrich Kittler's essay Protected Mode, published in this
volume. Media, technology and destruction are further elaborated
across the work in texts such as War.pl, Media and Drugs in Pynchon's
Second World War, again from Kittler, and Simon Ford's elegant take on
J.G Ballard's crashed cars exhibition of 1970, A Psychopathic Hymn.

Software and its expansion stand in obvious relation to
language. Attacking transparency means examining the prison cell or
virus of language; life coding as William S. Burrough's style cutup or
riot playback (Stewart Home). And perhaps the most substantial and
thorough-going examination is put forward by daring Vienna actionist
Oswald Wiener in his Notes on the Concept of the Bio-adapter which has
been thankfully unearthed here. Equally, Olga Goriunova's extensive
examination of a new Russian literary trend, the online male
literature of udaff.com provides both a reexamination of culture and
language, and an example of the diversity of xxxxx; a diversity well
reflected in background texts ranging across subjects such as Leibniz'
monadology, the ur-crash of supreme flaneur Thomas de Quincey and
several rewritings of the forensic model of Jack the Ripper thanks to
Stewart Home and Martin Howse.

xxxxx liberates software from the machinic, and questions the
transparency of language, proposing a new world view, a sheer
electromysticism which is well explained with reference to the works
of Thomas Pynchon in Friedrich Kittler's essay, translated for the
first time into English, which closes xxxxx.

http://xxxxx.1010.co.uk

http://openmute.org

All press/review/sales enquiries please address to m@1010.co.uk

Launch directions:

>From Aldgate East tube head down Commercial Road and further left into
Myrdle Street.

>From Whitechapel station turn left out of station, left again into New
Road and then right down Commercial Road until Myrdle Street.

Buses 205, 25, 254 and D3 run nearby

Map: http://tinyurl.com/jny5v
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