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Table of Contents:
remixing Cary Peppermint
Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com>
OpenAirWaves Archive
"Soenke Zehle" <soenke.zehle@web.de>
12hr update
{ brad brace } <bbrace@eskimo.com>
DIAN Announcement for June
DIAN <info@dian-network.com>
RAD(Y)O
Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt@n0name.de>
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Urban Vulnerability and Network Failure: Constructions and Ex
"geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>
sf video activist network: we interrupt this empire...
"geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>
--c-r-i-t-i-c-a-l-s-e-c-r-e-t--a-c-t-u-a-l--l-e-t-t-e-r--\-- a-u-t-h-o-r-s-#-3-
theletter <theletter@criticalsecret.org>
mark(s) 4.01 now available
Deb King <debkking@yahoo.com>
Mirage v 1.0 + Opening: June 8th
"C. Robbins" <cpr@mindspring.com>
(Announcer) transcodex
Are Flagan <areflagan@transcodex.net>
Buchneuerscheinung: Informatik und Gesellschaft
"Christian Fuchs" <christian.fuchs4@chello.at>
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 11:36:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com>
Subject: remixing Cary Peppermint
- --0-875684157-1053714976=:18588
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
http://www.lewislacook.com/sound/LewisLaCook_SincerityLecture.mp3
a little theory, a little techno, a little Bach...
bliss
l
NEW!!!--sondheim.exe--artware text editor for Windows
http://www.lewislacook.com/alanSondheim/sondheim.exe
http://www.lewislacook.com/
tubulence artist studio: http://turbulence.org/studios/lacook/index.html
- ---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
- --0-875684157-1053714976=:18588
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 22:52:11 +0200
From: "Soenke Zehle" <soenke.zehle@web.de>
Subject: OpenAirWaves Archive
an item for inclusion in the nettime pubs list:
<http://www.openairwaves.org/telecom/>
(Via PR Watch) A new project by the Center for Public Integrity takes a
close look at the telecommunications industry and its regulatory body, the
Federal Communications Commission. Visitors to OpenAirWaves.org will find
the CPI's "first-of-its-kind, 65,000 record, searchable database containing
ownership information on virtually every radio station, television station,
cable television system and telephone company in America." CPI also looked
at FCC travel records. They report that the FCC commissioners "have been
showered with nearly $2.8 million in travel and entertainment over the past
eight years, most of it from the telecommunications and broadcast industries
the agency regulates."
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2003 06:57:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: { brad brace } <bbrace@eskimo.com>
Subject: 12hr update
_______ _ __ ___ _
_ |__ __| | /_ |__ \| |
| __| | | | (_) | | __/ (__| |_
__ | | | | | | __/ | |/ /_| | | | |
_ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__|
|__| |_| |_|\___| |_|____|_| |_|_|
| __| | | | (_) | | __/ (__| |_
_ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__|
-_ | | | |__ ___ | | ) | |__ _ __
| __| | | | (_) | | __/ (__| |_
_ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__|
-_ | | | |__ ___ | | ) | |__ _ __
_ | __ \ (_) | |
| __| | | | (_) | | __/ (__| |_
_ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__|
_| |__) | __ ___ _ ___ ___| |_
|_ ___/ '__/ _ \| |/ _ \/ __| __|
-_ | | | |__ ___ | | ) | |__ _ __
_ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__|
|_| _ |_| \___/| |\___|\___|\__|
_ _/ |
_ |__/
> > > > Synopsis: The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project began December 30, 1994. A
`round-the-clock posting of sequenced hypermodern imagery from Brad Brace.
The hypermodern minimizes the familiar, the known, the recognizable; it
suspends identity, relations and history. This discourse, far from
determining the locus in which it speaks, is avoiding the ground on which
it could find support. It is trying to operate a decentering that leaves
no privilege to any center.
The 12-hour ISBN JPEG Project
-----------------------------
began December 30, 1994
Pointless Hypermodern Imagery... posted/mailed every 12 hours... a
spectral, trajective alignment for the 00`s! A continuum of minimalist
masks in the face of catastrophe; conjuring up transformative metaphors
for the everyday... A poetic reversibility of exclusive events...
A post-rhetorical, continuous, apparently random sequence of
imagery... genuine gritty, greyscale... corruptable, compact,
collectable and compelling convergence. The voluptuousness of the grey
imminence: the art of making the other disappear. Continual visual impact;
an optical drumming, sculpted in duration, on the endless present of the
Net.
An extension of the printed ISBN-Book (0-9690745) series... critically
unassimilable... imagery is gradually acquired, selected and re-sequenced
over time... ineluctable, vertiginous connections. The 12hr dialtone...
[ see ftp.idiom.com/users/bbrace/netcom/books.txt ]
KEYWORDS: >> Disconnected, disjunctive, distended, de-centered,
de-composed, ambiguous, augmented, ambilavent, homogeneous, reckless...
>> Multi-faceted, oblique, obsessive, obscure, obdurate...
>> Promulgated, personal, permeable, prolonged, polymorphous, provocative,
poetic, plural, perverse, potent, prophetic, pathological, pointless...
>> Emergent, evolving, eccentric, eclectic, egregious, exciting,
entertaining, evasive, entropic, erotic, entrancing, enduring,
expansive...
Every 12 hours, another!... view them, re-post `em, save `em,
trade `em, print `em, even publish them...
Here`s how:
~ Set www-links to -> http://www.eskimo.com/~bbrace/12hr.html
-> http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/12hr.html
-> http://bbrace.net/12hr.html
Look for the 12-hr-icon. Heavy traffic may require you to specify files
more than once! Anarchie, Fetch, CuteFTP, TurboGopher...
~ Download from -> ftp.pacifier.com /pub/users/bbrace
Download from -> ftp.idiom.com /users/bbrace
Download from -> ftp.rdrop.com /pub/users/bbrace
Download from -> ftp.eskimo.com /u/b/bbrace
Download from -> hotline://artlyin.ftr.va.com.au
* Remember to set tenex or binary. Get 12hr.jpeg
~ E-mail -> If you only have access to email, then you can use FTPmail to
do essentially the same thing. Send a message with a body of 'help' to
the server address nearest you:
*
ftpmail@ccc.uba.ar ftpmail@cs.uow.edu.au
ftpmail@ftp.uni-stuttgart.de ftpmail@ftp.Dartmouth.edu
ftpmail@ieunet.ie ftpmail@src.doc.ic.ac.uk
ftpmail@archie.inesc.pt ftpmail@ftp.sun.ac.za
ftpmail@ftp.sunet.se ftpmail@ftp.luth.se
ftpmail@NCTUCCCA.edu.tw ftpmail@oak.oakland.edu
ftpmail@sunsite.unc.edu ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com
ftpmail@census.gov
bitftp@plearn.bitnet bitftp@dearn.bitnet
bitftp@vm.gmd.de bitftp@plearn.edu.pl
bitftp@pucc.princeton.edu bitftp@pucc.bitnet
* *
~ Mirror-sites requested! Archives too!
The latest new jpeg will always be named, 12hr.jpeg
Average size of images is only 45K.
*
Perl program to mirror ftp-sites/sub-directories:
src.doc.ic.ac.uk:/packages/mirror
*
~ Postings to usenet newsgroups:
alt.12hr
alt.binaries.pictures.12hr
alt.binaries.pictures.misc
alt.binaries.pictures.fine-art.misc
* * Ask your system's news-administrator to carry these groups!
(There are also usenet image browsers: TIFNY, PluckIt, Picture Agent,
PictureView, Extractor97, NewsRover, Binary News Assistant, EasyNews)
~ This interminable, relentless sequence of imagery began in earnest on
December 30, 1994. The basic structure of the project has been over
twenty-four years in the making. While the specific sequence of
photographs has been presently orchestrated for more than 12 years` worth
of 12-hour postings, I will undoubtedly be tempted to tweak the ongoing
publication with additional new interjected imagery. Each 12-hour posting
is like the turning of a page; providing ample time for reflection,
interruption, and assimilation.
~ The sites listed above also contain information on other cultural
projects and sources.
~ A very low-volume, moderated mailing list for announcements and
occasional commentary related to this project has been established at
topica.com /subscribe 12hr-isbn-jpeg
- --
This project has not received government art-subsidies. Some opportunities
still exist for financially assisting the publication of editions of large
(33x46") prints; perhaps (Iris giclees) inkjet duotones or extended-black
quadtones. Other supporters receive rare copies of the first three
web-offset printed ISBN-Books. Contributions and requests for
12hr-email-subscriptions, can also be made at
http://bbrace.laughingsquid.net/buy-into.html, or by mailed cheque/check:
$50/mo $500/yr.
- --
ISBN is International Standard Book Number. JPEG and GIF are types of
image files. Get the text-file, 'pictures-faq' to learn how to view or
translate these images. [ftp ftp.idiom.com/users/bbrace/netcom/]
- --
(c) Credit appreciated. Copyleft
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
<bbrace@eskimo.com>
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 2003 18:44:32 +0200
From: DIAN <info@dian-network.com>
Subject: DIAN Announcement for June
- --------------5AA940CC0FB8A9930FC2B2F3
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; x-mac-type="54455854"; x-mac-creator="4D4F5353"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
DIAN - Digital Interactive Artists' Network
[Image]
http://dian-network.com
June:
DIAN - Digital Interactive Artists' Network -
Our focus for the month of June is JEAN-LUC LAMARQUE. We proudly present
her work:
"Pianographique"
http://dian-network.com/navigation.html
Mix visuals with sound and create your own multimedia masterpiece.
Pianographique transforms your computer into a fully funktified groove
machine. It works by assigning a sample and a visual to each letter on
your keyboard.
You can choose between nine pianos styles (rap, jazz, techno, classic,
·). Create your music while simultaneously conducting the play of a
visual graphic maelstrom· Have fun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
DIAN - Digital Interactive Artists' Network - is a network for artists
who are seriously involved in using Internet technology in the domain of
contemporary art.
We are deeply interested in artists working in this field. Artists
working with the web, the net and related domains, please submit your
work here:
http://dian-network.com/information.html
Visit DIAN and explore what can be done on the Internet.
address: http://dian-network.com
e-mail: info@dian-network.com
to unsubscribe from this list send an email
to unsubscribe@dian-network.com
- --------------5AA940CC0FB8A9930FC2B2F3
Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary="------------2A64EB8ADDD80017696B05BC"
- --------------2A64EB8ADDD80017696B05BC
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 21:48:41 +0200
From: Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt@n0name.de>
Subject: RAD(Y)O
______________
/ __________ \
__________ _____ ________ / /_____ ___ \ \ ________
\______ \ / _ \ \______ \ / / \__ | | \ \ \_____ \
| _/ / /_\ \ | | \ / / / | | \ \ / | \
| | \/ | \ | \ \( ( \____ | ) )/ | \
|____|_ /\____|__ //_______ / \ \ / ______| / / \_______ /
\/ \/ \/ \ \ \/ / / \/
\ \__________/ /
+ \______________/
O
/|\
/\ RAD(Y)O
Audio Graffity
"ENTER THE AOL TIME WARNER MATRIX"
1. OEFFNEN/OPEN
___
|\ |
| \ |
| |_|
\|
2. HOEREN/LISTEN
o
:-)
o
3. SCHLIESSEN/CLOSE
___
| |
| |
|___|
Sa., 24.05.2003 ??:??
Deutsche Telekom Telefonzelle/telephone box
Maybachufer/Friedelstr., Berlin (Kreuzberg)
Germany
check! test! Citymap on http://www.n0name.de/radyo
"Radio musz wie Graffity sein: a-sozial, nichtreziprok und subfantastisch!"
(Bert "Recycled" Brecht)
"Radio must be like graffity: a-social, nonreciprocal and subfantastic!"
(Bert "Recycled" Brecht)
Summer-T.A.Z.-Radio? Don't hype the believe!
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 10:37:12 +1000
From: "geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Subject: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Urban Vulnerability and Network Failure: Constructions and Experiences of Emergencies, Crises and Collapse
From: "Steve Graham" <s.d.n.graham@ncl.ac.uk>
Urban Vulnerability and Network Failure:
Constructions and Experiences of Emergencies, Crises and Collapse
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS (PLEASE CIRCULATE)
An ESRC-Sponsored International Seminar
jointly hosted by SURF, University of Salford and GURU, University of
Newcastle
Manchester, United Kingdom, 29-30 April 2004
Rationale
In these times of 'globalisation' cities are being powerfully shaped by
their relationships with socio-technical networks and infrastructures.
These organise, and mediate, the distribution of people, goods, services,
information, wastes, capital, and energy between multiple scales within
and between urban regions. The contemporary urban process, and contemporary
social power, thus, more than ever, involve complex 'cyborg' liaisons and
multiple, distanciated connections. These straddle many scales and link
bodies, places, and institutions continuously with more or less distant
elsewheres. By making possible a myriad of mobilities such infrastructures
remake the spaces and times of urban life in the process.
On the one hand, the everyday life and ideology of the modern city is
dependent on the seamless and continuous functioning, together, of a vast
array of functioning technical systems(although, for vast numbers of
urbanites in the global South, the reality is often of little connectivity
and worse reliability). On the other hand, large swathes of contemporary
corporate, state, and military power centres on the construction,
maintenance, legitimation and protection of vast arrays of extended
technological systems. Strung out across the world, and configured
carefully to support the 'glocal' geographies of power and connectivity of
contemporary capitalism, these network spaces - fibre optic networks,
airport and airline spaces, Just-in-Time logistics systems, E-commerce and
transactional flows, transnational energy systems, and so on -- are
critical strategic supports to neoliberal globalisation. Linking up, and
mediating, key spaces and divisions of labour reliably, quickly and
seamlessly, the physical, energy, water and informational infrastructures
that sustain contemporary capitalism are perhaps the most critical
strategic supports of contemporary global capitalism.
A widening range of iconic infrastructure collapses serve as opportunities
to learn about the cultural, political, social and material dimensions of
the importance of infrastructural connection in contemporary urban, and
geopolitical, life. Since the early 1990s, to name but a few, iconic
collapsese and failures have included the Montreal ice storm, the Auckland
power blackout, the gas attack on the Tokyo underground, the Sydney
drought, the California energy crisis, the Chicago heat wave, the failure
of Hong Kong airport's freight system, the September 11th attacks, and the
'Lovebug' virus. The infrastructural devastation of countless urban wars
also needs to be considered here.
As seamless and 24 hour flows and connections become ever-more critical for
capitalist urbanism, however, so massive political, discursive and material
resources are being devoted to try and reduce the supposed
vulnerabilities that these systems exhibit to collapse, malfunctioning, or
attack. This is especially so when the September 11th and Anthrax attacks,
in particular, demonstrated that mobility systems, themselves, can be
appropriated as 'terrorist' weapons. 'Resilience', and 'critical
infrastructure protection', are ubiquitous buzz words in these times of
politically constructed moral panic, continuous states of emergency, and
the ongoing Bush-led 'war on terror'. Huge resources and efforts are now
being devoted by States, infrastructure corporations, the military, urban
infrastructure agencies, and corporate capital to reducing the supposed
vulnerability of telecommunications, transport, logistics, transaction,
electricity, and utilities systems to technical failure, sabotage, natural
disasters or the failures caused by the reduced built in back-up that often
comes with liberalised markets. The glaring fragility, and low reliability,
of many computer-mediated communications and infrastructure systems is a
particular focus of concern here. Examples include government programmes to
protect critical infrastructure, commercial services for network back up,
and military (and terrorist groups') interest in the disrupting of
adversaries' infrastructure networks. Civil defence programmes designed to
increase cities' resilience to attack and targeting, and so on, are also
reaching unprecedented levels.
As Tim Luke has observed, networked connections and collapses also form a
critical focus of cultural politics. Narratives and discourses of failed
flow and connection stalk many underground and dystopian scenes and genres
of culture. Contemporary urban culture is full of accounts which reveal a
fascination with such moments of what he calls 'decyborganisation'. This
is because they reveal, however fleetingly, the utter reliance of modern
urban life on distanciated flow and interaction. The cultural narratives
and representations that surround the failure and collapse of networked
infrastructures are a key aspect of their social importance.
Conference Aim and Objective
The core aim of this conference is to explore the ways in which reactions
to, and experiences of, the collapse of technical and networked
infrastructures within and between cities are constructed, experienced,
imagined, represented, and contested. We seek in particular to explore
these themes under conditions of growing infrastructural stress,
re-regulation, globalisation, increasing concerns with failure, the
changing geopolitical situation surrounding the 'war on terror', and the
strong fascination for infrastructural collapse within contemporary
culture. By bringing together researchers representing a range of
disciplines, including geography, history, sociology, critical theory,
development studies, political economy, geopolitics, surveillance and
defence studies, the objective is to stimulate interdisciplinary discussion
and collaboration that examines the meaning of connectivity and collapse in
contemporary urban life, politics, governance, and culture.
Seminar Themes
(1) Conceptualising 'Cyborg' Urbanisation: How can urban, social and
critical theory conceptualise the socio-technologies of connection,
resilience, mobility, and collapse in contemporary cities ?
(2) Urban Vulnerability and Network Failures: Constructions and Experiences
of Emergencies, Crises and Collapse. How do different disciplines
construct concepts of urban vulnerability and network failure ? How does
network stress and failure operate materially and how is it represented
politically and culturally ? Why, how and where do technical networks
collapse? What can be learnt about the discursive, economic or material
role of technical connections in a globalised context by studying what
happens when connections fail ? How does the governance of cities, spaces
and networked infrastructure intersect in various contexts to address (and
exploit ?) perceptions of stress and risk. How are such politics shaped by
broader political economies of globalisation, mobility, flow and
re-regulation ? How are corporate and popular fears of, and vulnerabilities
to, the failure of connectivity addressed in such processes of governance
?
(3) Networked Collapses as States of Emergency : What can be learnt from
in-depth case studies of instances of network failures or collapse ? What
happens when the normalisation of flow, mobility and connection breaks down
? What social, economic, and cultural coping mechanisms and innovations
are developed to deal with the collapse ? How do political and governance
coalitions at various scales, in states, cities and network spaces, respond
to failure ? What are the longer term political, economic or cultural
consequences of network failure ? How are crises and collapse in
infrastructures, and wider processes of 'de-cyborgisation,' represented in
contemporary culture ?
(4) Networked Collape, Security, and Organised Violence How do various
state and non-state militaries and target and destroy adversaries'
infrastructure networks? In what ways are national, homeland and urban
'security' strategies, and critical infrastructure protection policies,
being reforged to address, or exploit, fears of networked collapse ? What
political economic transitions do such strategies support? What
discursive, and linguistic constructions do such political strategies rely
on ? Beyond the hype what is the real scope of 'cyberwar' ? What strategies
and techniques are used? How effective, or widespread, is such
'network-based' warfare ? How does it relate to the current geopolitical
position (dominated by a single 'hyperpower' pursuing a 'war on terror'
without apparent end to further its geopolitical interests in the Middle
East and Central Asia)?
Abstract Submission
Please submit a 250 words abstract to Steve Graham (s.d.n.graham@ncl.ac.uk)
AND Simon Marvin (S.Marvin@salford.ac.uk) before September 1st 2003. Papers
will be required for pre-circulation before the seminar that will be hosted
in central Manchester, United Kingdom on 29-30 April 2004. There will be a
small fee for attending the event.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stephen Graham e-mail s.d.n.graham@ncl.ac.uk
Professor of Urban Technology Telephone +44(0) 191 222 6808
Global Urban Research Unit (GURU) Fax +44(0) 191 222 8811
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
3rd Floor, Claremont Tower
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, U.K.
Global Urban Research Unit (GURU) http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru
Surveillance and Society Web Journal
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 09:07:24 +1000
From: "geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Subject: sf video activist network: we interrupt this empire...
http://www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/1610627.php
WE INTERRUPT THIS EMPIRE...
The San Francisco Video Activist Network presents the story you won't see on
Fox News: an eye-popping, jaw-dropping look at the Bay Area's radical
resistance to an illegal war. WE INTERRUPT THIS EMPIRE...
Composed of various segments, the first half of WE INTERRUPT THIS EMPIRE...
is a collaborative work from some of San Francisco's independent
videographers. Jino Choi and Jessica Lawrence document the direct actions
that shut down both the financial district of San Francisco on the morning
of March 20th and the corporate profiteers of the Bay Area over the
following weeks. The Whispered Media video collective takes on how the
pro-war protests received 'balanced' coverage and how such coverage devolves
into a flag-waving, pro-war culture blinded to the truths and realities of
war. 'The Logic of Empire,' by David Martinez and Iain Boar, considers the
war not as an out-of-control business venture fronted by the petroleum
industry, but as the first steps in a new, lethally dangerous, imperialist
project with Iraq as its first subject. 'War American Style' by Natalija
Vekic, Monica Nolan and Christian Bruno is a sly critique of the corporate
media's role as Pentagon stenographer, where mainstream news media clips are
re-assembled and examined for gross inaccuracies, glaring omissions and
corporate biases. In 'The War Profiteers,' by Miles Montalbano, interviews
and film clips shine a light on the Military Industrial Complex as the film
looks at corporations with close ties to the Bush administration, and their
ability to influence policy and profit from war. The second half of the
program will be selects from Shutdown Downtown Fogtown, a daring collection
of on-the-scene videos from the historic anti-war protests that shutdown San
Francisco.
For more information, contact Whispered Media at 415-552-7959 or
www.videoactivism.org.
Proceeds from WE INTERRUPT THIS EMPIRE... go to the Video Activist Network
(VAN) and Whispered Media. The VAN is an informal association of activists
and politically conscious artists using video to support social, economic
and environmental justice campaigns. Whispered Media is a collective that
offers video witnessing, support and training, collects archival political
footage, and produces video works about specific grassroots campaigns and
organizations.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 21:31:00 +0200
From: theletter <theletter@criticalsecret.org>
Subject: --c-r-i-t-i-c-a-l-s-e-c-r-e-t--a-c-t-u-a-l--l-e-t-t-e-r--\-- a-u-t-h-o-r-s-#-3-
To nettime friends,
Here is our collective thematic newsletter: by author, by subjects...
Monthly flux may be more (according to our events) may be less (that could
mean any chaotic but dualistic accident). You can answer to personal names
(but in your subject don't forget to name who) same address:
theletter@criticalsecret.org .
Have a good day! Thanks.
The any unbordering
N E W S O N T H E A U T H O R S A N D W E B Z I N E A C T S
emergent multifields and thema-anachronistic http://www.criticalsecret.com
|||]|]|]]|]||]|||]|]|]|]|]]|]]|]|]]]||||||]]]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
c-r-i-t-i-c-a-l-s-e-c-r-e-t--a-c-t-u-a-l--l-e-t-t-e-r--\--a-u-t-h-o-r-s-#-3
|||]|]|]]|]||]|||]|]|]|]|]]|]]|]|]]]||||||]]]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
H A R V E Y B E N G E
An Exhibition
FIRST EVER PICTURES OF GOD
Photographs by Harvey Benge, New Zeland
First Exhibition in Paris
opens June 3, 'til July 12 2003.
@ LIBRAIRIE FLORENCE LOEWY
9-11 rue de Thorigny 75003 Paris
opened from tuesday to saturday 14pm-19pm
http://www.harveybenge.com
http://www.florenceloewy.com
]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
J E A N B A U D R I L L A R D
A book
on last Presidential Elections in France
First edition in French
'Au Royaume des aveugles'
Collection 10/20
Editions Sens et Tonka
http://www.senstonkaediteurs.com
]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
H E N R I - P I E R R E J E U D Y
A book
A criticism on aesthetics theory of Urban
First edition in French
'Critique de l'esthétique urbaine'
Collection Socio 10/20
Editions Sens et Tonka, (FR)
http://www.senstonkaediteurs.com
]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
A N N E Q U E R R I E N
A book
On Starhawk
'Femmes, Magie et Politique'
(Women, Magic and Politics)
Translated from english-american by An Morbic
Collection 'Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond'
Editions du Seuil, Paris (FR)
http://www.seuil.com
]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
P A S C A L E C R I T O N
Microtonal Contemporary Music
CD @ Assaï editor
SPECIAL MENTION
CHARLES CROS ACADEMY
Performed by
Ensemble 2e2m, Paul Méfano
SOLISTS
Didier Aschour, Guitare
Pierre Roullier, flûte
HervéDerrien, violoncelle
Christophe Roy, violoncelle
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D A N I E L G U I B E R T
A book
On conception of objects, its world of fiction
First edition in French
'La conception des objets, son monde de fiction'
essay out of collection
éditions de L'Harmattan, Paris (FR)
http://editions-harmattan.fr
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D A N I E L G U I B E R T
A contribution in
Acts from the symposium
PETER COLLINS AND THE CRITICAL HISTORY
OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE (bilingual)
@ Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA),
Montreal (CA)
Leading editor IRENA LATEK
Publisher IRHA
(agrement McGill University, Université de Montréal, faculté d'Architecture
et d'eEnvironnement, CCA)
Texts by
Tanis Hinchliffe
Annmarie Adams
Louis Martin
Joan Ockman
Réjean Legault
Daniel Guibert
Joseph Rykwert
Martin Bressani
Alberto Pérez-Gomez
Conclusions
Kenneth Frampton, Joseph Rykwert, Kurt W. Forster
http://cca.qc.ca
IRHAmontreal@yahoo.com
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- -q-u-o-t-e---i-n---e-x-t-e-n-s-o-
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Changing ideals... Rhetoric of the lack or of the loss
by Daniel Guibert
translation by Isabelle Cordonnier
I would like to start by brushing aside any temptation to understand
Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture 1750-1950 (1) as the reduction of a
critical theory concerning architecture to its history. Thereby, it becomes
possible to locate this book in a complex of the domain of Architecture
symbolised by an hexagon (Plate I). A topique is assigned to each tip:
Theory, Aesthetics, History, Project, Critic, and Doctrine. Each topique is
composed of common places of the discourse and the argumentation, of facts
and things within a time-frame. Each proceeds from its own cognitive
organisations, yet each of them interferes with the others. According to
this figure, we can locate points of view, workings, and problematics,
following the junction mode of the selected topiques dual, tripartite or
quadripartite and the relating mode of the user of this complex (Plate II).
Each of the researchers involves him/herself in the argued selection of a
topical setting or in the report of one or more settings that delineates the
universe and the object of the research. Moreover each one may engage the
local critic of the limits of this hexagonal framework.
Therefore I will put forward that Collins¹ writing is specifically borne
by the duality Doctrine-Project. In line with his intention to write an
history of modern architecture that should be less normative than it appears
to him to be by ³some of the great historians of the german school² who,
Collins said (2), were already engaged to write it ³between 1930 and1 1950²,
this duality Doctrine-Project of course partly recovers the History-Critic
duality which is the theme of our meeting. But, according to me, the duality
Doctrine-Project is the permanent horizon of Collins¹ research, his
motivation and his avowed intentions. I put forward this excessive
hypothesis because it seems to be all the more grounded in the reading of
Collins¹ other book, which is as famous as the wonderful Concrete (3) Š
Collins¹ text¹s tension around the duality Doctrine-Project would justify
the historical means he uses, in Changing... especially, to support a
doctrinal position already developed in Concrete, a doctrinal position that
would in turn entail a non vulgarly modern critical position, a position
that furthermore strives to be coherent with an as rigorously modern mode of
engagement of the project process.
To extend Collins¹ research from this point of view, I have to explain
my interpretation of the structure of his book.
1. Demand for a new architecture, lack of a modern architecture
The argumentation of the text takes its strength from the well-known
ideological discontinuity between the metaphysic of tradition and the
metaphysic of change. An historical change of the status of Reason that is
not installed by the so-called ³Enlightenment² (4) movement but concluded by
it at the end of the 18th century.
In spite of his historicist and critical materialism, Collins does not
seem to take into account the ambivalence of resorting to this discontinuity
model that comes more from the myth of Revolution than from historical
knowledge. In Collins¹ text discontinuity nevertheless justifies the
historically determined rise of a ³demand for a new architecture², that
would remain unsatisfied for some time. This demand that is also a
recognition of a lack appears in Chapter 13 of the 24 chapters of the book
only. According to Collins¹ historical plot, this demand is the
justification for a renewed investigation that would gather facts that are
diversely located but are common to the Western culture. All these facts
could legitimise the definition of a valuable object specifically adapted to
fill this lack, a valuable object that must satisfy the ³demand for a new
architecture² (5). All these facts also operate to determine where, when and
how this object could be identified. A identification that comes late in
History, as the book itself, since it will not be articulated before the end
of the 19th century, and from the end of Chapter 19. Once this valuable
object identified and constructed, it is circulated until the Epilogue.
2. The resort to analogy brings wrong answers only
Under the influence of the triumphing Reason¹s determinations, the
historical moment, subsequent to the manifestation of the ³demand², is
written by Collins as the ³emergence² of an analogical reasoning. In an
architectural theory looking for its modernity, the resort to the analogical
reasoning will be first arbitrarily systematised according to four analogies
(in the four chapters following the one in which the ³demand² is justified).
The imply the use of symbolic references such as body, language, culinary
technique, industrial machinery.
However Collins will consider the analogical reasoning as a wrong
³theoretic² answer to this demand : the linguistic games around the symbolic
references do not allow the identification of the true valuable object that
must answer this demand for a new architecture. The analogy has already be
once discredited because of the resort to the forms of Old and Tradition (6)
(cf the analysis of the Revival styles). In this case the analogy would mean
an imitation of forms and settings of the past more than a structuring
homology between past and present forms. Therefore all this styles revival
are excluded because of their formalism, not to say ornementalism.
Analogy will be condemned a second time at the end of Chapter 17 (7)
that deals with this kind of ³functional analogy² that is the ³linguistic
analogy² (end of Part III titled ³Functionalism², as well as at the
beginning of Chapter 19 on ³Rationalsim²). The analogical reasoning is
stigmatised as irrational and heuristically inadequate for the modern
project. It cannot contribute to the success oft he search for a valuable
object initiating new forms. It brings in nothing but formalism and
ornementalism. If the analogical reasoning is inapt to initiate modern
heuristics, what kind of modern reasoning would be highlighted by its
heuristic function?
3. The true answer: the structuring/constructive analogy
The right answer, that could be but true, or at least that finds its
truth in itself, is to be found under the general title ³Rationalism²
(Chapter 19). It is noteworthy that it is already anticipated as early as
the beginning of Chapter 13 on the manifestation of the ³demand² (8).
Rationalism is credited with all the positive presuppositions, it is the
object of a ³prophecy² by Cesar Daly who heralds the new belief: the new
forms¹ laws will be derived from science. This rationalism, and I quote
Collins summing up Cesar Daly, will be ³the backbone of every valid
architectural theories² (9).
From this potential of noteworthy facts comes the
structuring/constructive doctrine through new materials and frame. It is the
unique reason of modern form, e.g., acceptable only because true, not wrong,
not lying from the perspective of the mental form of the constructive
structure or of an economy of material using. According to Collins¹ text, it
appears out of the historic magma of successive errors and logically
concretises at the end of the 1çth century with the discovery of new
materials such as cast iron, steel, reinforced concrete, and the search for
rational procedures to implement them (10). The technical-scientific
rationalism of the steel frame, and especially of the reinforced concrete
largely used by the architects, provided they shared it with the civil and
military engineers, can solve on its own the question raised by the ³demand²
to fill the lack of a new modern architecture. The point is to entertain a
true relation to the spirit of the time, the one of the freedom of the
economic cycle of progress. The answer to this question is thus focussed as
the reconstitution, through the constructive integrity, by a structural
integrism of frame, of a basis of truth and beauty. It is the price to pay
for the plastic purity and transparency of the modern way of being. New
architectural forms will follow suit.
The ³true reasoning² of architectural modernity can then be encapsulated
in the following syllogism :
If the technical-scientific laws are the basis for modern rationalism,
and if this rationalism is the backbone of the new architectural theory,
then the modern building, thought according to this theory, will find its
backbone in the technical-scientific frame of reinforced concrete.
The metaphor of the backbone that must support the basis of the new
modern doctrine is here objectively, lined with the structuring-constructive
skeleton that must support the building. The philosophical Reason of the
Enlightenment and the technical-scientific Reason are melted in one
argumentative weft, in one unique episteme. It puts forward the belief and
conviction in one structural revealed truth of architecture. This conviction
and this belief will at last make the modern project a completed being, a
being perfected by a consistent contextualism (11). Such would be the
valuable object, of a theological value more than theoretic, that the text
would bring to us. We just have now to show how this initiation is
theosophical as well, insofar as it searches in Nature the technical and
structural truth of the built.
4. Collins and the structuring/constructive analogy
Such is a rationalism whose building power mocks at metaphors not only
of backbone, frame and skeleton, but also of metaphors of fibre, line or
cell structures, and of any other concretions common in the studies of
structural morphology and constructive geometry. The living body skeleton
will be concretely realised (if I may say so) in the ³own body² of modern
architecture through the reinforced concrete frame, as in the expression ³ a
well-built body². The ideal-type of this modern building will be wholly
encapsulated in August Perret¹s worksŠ
We could imagine that Tecton and Factor are working at the root of all
this architectonic of the Constructive Reason suggested by Collins. That is,
the carpenter and the arké-tecton, the master of the structure, of a
structure that would be thought as a body-frame, both a set of bones as
organised to support the body and a group of essential and resisting parts
that support the Whole, a Whole-World. The divine pythagorician workman and
the Nature¹s artifex of Giambattista Vico (12) are haunting Collins¹ text.
So do Vitruve and his Book III, which repeats the numerical analogy of the
body and the building, and Alberti and his building-bodyŠAll have travelled
to us and to Collins who has been caught by them, even in his practise as an
historian.
Hence my hypothesis of a possible infratextual writing of the doctrinal
basis of Changing idealsŠ, on the analogical mode of a continuous geometric
proportion. It would complete or prolong Collins¹ analogy who forbade
himself to use it, in the name of a criticism of modernity that as limited
to the only theme of breaking:
"The rational construction of the modern building is to the human body frame
as it is to all Nature¹s bodies, what it itself is to the whole Creation:
all these constructions are structurally and conceptually homologue".
Hence these falsely naive questions that relate to the links between
this metaphysics of construction and an as metaphysical tradition of the
Great Homomorphism:
"Why would this form of rationality, in its analogical homomorphism, more
than someothers that could be deducted from a ³functional² analogy, make at
last and itself alone architecture as modern?"
Why would the refusal of this rationalism-functionalism necessarily
predispose to the inevitable eventuality of an exclusive contextualised
constructive rationalism, that be triumphant and a saviour?
When this logical system seems to be supported by an analogical
reasoning, otherwise generally condemned by Collins ?
And what if Collins¹ analogy, a sort of negative faire-valoir for the
construction of a rational and positive valuable object, would, in spite of
its modernist condemnation, constitute an important theoretic stake? If the
analogy designed by Collins effectively reformulates doctrinal trends
considered as pre-modern, can we consider an extension of his mode of
reformulation in skipping modern prejudices ?
5. Unfolding the analogy
It should not be impossible to face these contradictions. We just have to
consider the analogical form Collins pretends not to believe in but with
which he plays, as an implicit adaptation of an archaic analogy, the
foundation of the Western cultural myth and of the architect¹s.
The epistemic position of the modern project in ChangingŠ can therefore be
³parallactically² understood under this different approach. It becomes then
significant to notice that a thinking of modernity, always directed towards
the signs of the realisation of a near future, plays on a retroactive resort
to the eternal onto-theology.
Quoting Jürgen Habermas, the theoretician of modernity beyond any
suspicion of any post-modern conservatism, ³(Š)modernity maintains secret
links with classicism² (13). As for me, analogy resorts from more than the
acknowledgement of the effective maintenance of these links the Perret
brothers¹architecture is a guarantee of. Whether we want it or not, analogy
brings us back to the primitive scene of the architecture that is focused in
it. As analogy is to be found in languages, there we cohabit with it ; the
main of our cognitive schemes are formed with it. Within the metaphysics of
architecture where it gains the status of traditional episteme, and
everywhere else, including within the sciences today, analogy plays the part
of the structuring unit of the understanding of the world and of the
formation of our knowledge (14).
To quickly support this assertion, I must remind you of the essentials
characteristics and features of analogy and its mode of functioning, by
stopping the film on one of the major cognitive operative images of our
culture. I will thus try to trivially instrumentalise it as a possible
descriptive potential of the dynamics of architecture¹s doctrinal
formations.
6. Euclidian geometry and symbolic of the analogy
We could limit ourselves to Euclide¹s definition (15) that
mathematically stabilise a philosophical and mystical, mathematical and
physic tradition, that is materialised by Thalès and Pythagoras (16) three
centuries later (Plate III).
The Euclidian definition seems to me to be largely accepted, at least by
us who have inherited the cultures of the Mediterranean Basin. It has
something of the nature of our real, symbolic and imaginary
three-dimensional mental space : analogy is the comparison of two sizes or
of two concrete numbers, and more generally speaking, of two objects. It is
also called logos. The prefix ana means ³from bottom to top², it prefigures
a hierarchy of the ratio. It subordinates one of the terms to the other
which becomes the denominator and the measure.
From a cognitive point of view, the comparison would immediately be
doubled with another operation, an assessment, which is forming judgements
on the properties of similitude or equality from the comparison of two
ratios.
To see the relative equivalence between two ratios, their harmony, their
analogical proportion is an operation that links several judgements (17) or
elementary perceptions of the hierarchical vertical links established
between parts and whole, and horizontally between compared wholes and
between parts, then, in a criss-cross relation, the relations between the
parts and wholes of two close universes (the famous multiplication of the
extreme and average reasons). From these judgements and assessments arise
many metaphors, areas of signification with no common measure except the one
of the systematic application of the Law of Similitude that is linked to the
analogical reasoning from which come all its significations.
The linking through the metaphor (the word for the word, the image for
the image) and metonymie (the part for the whole), and the
logical-mathematical formalisation of the analogy which homologically
reports it belong to a² configurated² order of a universal harmony, a divine
mathesis. It regulates the fundamental homological correspondence between an
architectonic of the world and an architectonic of the built and the
building (18).
The funding and generic (19) analogy can thus be rewritten in two ways:
‹ Subjectively: the World is to God what Architecture is to the Architect (a
disjointed proportion)
‹ Objectively: the World is to God what Architecture is to the World
(continuous proportion)
Not to forget the logical inference: All these entities are contained in a
sacred relation of organic homology.
If the analogy is fundamentally theological it can also be ontological :
it distributes the value of being according to the being of the Being
(divinity), the being of the World (mundanity, physicality or naturality),
the Architect¹s (architecturality of the world) and the architects¹
(demiurgical operationality), not to forget the destination being (mankind).
The analogy¹s onto-theological semantics establishes proportionally
hierarchised degrees of perfection of the being between all these terms,
degrees whose mises en relation, comparisons structure judgement (20).
7. Analogical taxinomy of the architectural doctrine
As soon as the onto-theological and cognitive structure of the funding
analogy is unfolded we cannot forget that its terms vary.
First, we have to remember that in the world of values attached to a generic
reference the privilege to be the architectonic model of the world attached
to architecture when we say the ²architecture of the systems² is
traditionally shared with music and poetical song. Both can be composed when
Walter Gropius¹ Apollo takes mass in our democracies.
To formalise this situation of a sharing of the status of first reference of
any human creation linked to architecture, we just have to authorise the
propriety of analogy to develop in a continuous geometric proportion, both
burgeoning and rhizomatic (Plate V).
The epistemic foundation of architecture can thus be thought over and
written differently according to what comes between the creator, his World
and architecture, be it music or poetry as the primary analogy, or any other
entity such as the body, the machine,the language or the
³structuring-combinatory² frame of a building.
8. Rhetoric of the loss, epilogue
It is not in my intentions to make the analogical reasoning and its
epistemic invariance the ultimate explanation but it seems to me that the
generic analogy that is the basis of a metaphysic of the onto-theological
remains operational in our present time (21).
For Collins, as it still can for us, it cold have been a critical
determining moment of a theory of modernity in architecture as a theory of
his project.
When Collins ³forgets² to question the movement of thought by analogy
beyond the description of its functioning and some common places about it,
he ³unwittingly² moves his text in a two-fold argumentative implication: an
historical one of predication and a mythical one of denial.
Collins seems to tackle the first implication through a huge and selective
historical work to prove his doctrinal conceptions. Because it goes beyond
his historical and doctrinal positivity, he cannot but deny the second which
is deeply rooted in the western political, cultural and social imagination.
Yet the myth is still valid, in spite of and against Collins, as an ³already
being there². The myth is valid as an epistemic basis which, in the text,
both operates its own cuts and opposes the artificial ruptures. Presence of
a contingency which bends the words and with which we always have to make
with, especially in architecture.
Are we now able to think over Collin¹ book on each of these themes ?
Especially the one of his analogy, which is one of the major singularities
of his book, from the point of view of architectural idealities Collins
subtly adopted ? Maybe, and at least in reuniting the three following
hypothesis:
- - First, that this search for the acceptable and non-acceptable idealities
Collins initiated to determine the modern movement, could historically
incorporate the ambivalence of the epistemic structure of the architectural
thinking, an ambivalence that would be both generic and genealogical ;
- - Second, that to conceptualise this ambivalence would have made his analogy
objectively more explanatory and more striking, instead of it being hastily
considered as a tradition¹s residue and thrown into History¹s garbage, and
of himself sacrifice History to myth under this very analogical form,
implicitly forwarded.
- - Third, that Collins¹ analogics would be outdated as a wrong doctrinal
answer compared to a true ³demand for a new architecture² but that it would
be a valid explicatory hypothesis of the mental process that leads the
symbolic search of the thinkers of the architectural project, including
himself, to enter the field of a still active, not to say dominant,
thinking.
As an epilogue,
Collins¹ text remains dependent on the three-fold manifestation of the
building story :
- - the one that tales of a misdeed caused by the ³cultural reaction to
change², modernist included, that just needs intellectual and political
repair ;
- - the one that designates a lack of immediate realisation of a modernist
utopia in which all the social spheres should simultaneously be conform to
the model of new being and to the newly promoted values system ;
- - the one, the most important one according to my hypothesis, that reveals
an irreversible epistemic loss of substance and of symbolic power of
architecture within it own culture.
The analogy Collins builds relevantly points at the palliative and teeming
movement of this loss. Hence the un-ended waltz of salvation references that
always comes after a theology of the fall the text informs through a
methaphysics of historical discontinuity. After the post-modern adventure
and deconstructionist researches, the search for new references reveals a
need to answer an historical demand for the recomposing of the doctrinal
formation and decomposing of successive and always unadapted modernities.
But following on the elements of the content of the depressed history of
architecture would also presuppose that its invariant structure should be
reconsidered according to the present ³peripherical² deculturation as well
as to the evolution of philosophy and especially the evolution of cognitive
sciences.
Hence a critical taking into consideration of the hypothesis of the
depression of the doctrinal basis would probably have guaranteed or rejected
the text, always so fascinating of a subjective trend towards
overvalorisation of the only constructive-contextual rationalism that takes
its form not from explanatory hypothesis of a historical order of things but
from the argumentation of a belief.
Taking again Collins¹ argumentation in a parallactical way, I follow its
movement but I would change my point of view and go on the other side of its
analogics, towards critical moments other than the hackneyed moments of
modernism because these seem to me to be strangely linked the traditional
generic analogy. Through this we can imagine clarify Collins¹ intentional
point of view on architectural idealities that form the ³theory² that leads
him to leave the epistemological thought to go into ³doctrine². I hence
wonder if, through this very mean, among others of course, we could still
have some hope if not of mastering the irrepressible outpouring of
architectural doctrines, at least to understand their formation and to build
an operating representation of them that could be transmitted and
communicated.
D.G.
Translation I.C.
NOTES:
(1) Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture 1750/1950.
(London: Faber and Faber and Montréal : Mc Gill University Press , 1965;
Montréal: Mc Gill -Queen¹s University Press, 1998).
(2) Speech delivered by Peter Collins for the celebration of Gustave
Perret¹s centenary : ³L¹architecture de Perret², A. et G. Perret
Architectes français, 1874-1954 1876-1952. (Paris : publication du
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, 1976) 18-32.
(3) Peter Collins, Concrete. The vision of a new architecture : a study of
Auguste Perret and his precursors. (London : Faber and Faber, 1959.
Traduction française : Splendeur du béton - Les prédécesseurs et l¹¦uvre
d¹Auguste Perret. Paris : Hazan, 1995).
(4) The historical modernity phenomenon does not appear during this precise
period ; it materialised at this moment only. The change in the ideas and
social practise called ³Enlightenment² seen by Kant especially in his famous
1784 paper Was ist Aufklärung ?, puts an effective end to - and does not
cause ³this historical change that deals with the political and social
existence of all men on Earth², as Michel Foucault wrote. Kant criticises
this new status of Reason : it is henceforth possible for and even required
from each human being to have a practise of Reason that would be free,
public and universal. It is the mature vocation of mankind, its
anthropological finality. Such would be the new structuring unity, the new
episteme to qualify modernity : it would be both ontological because it
implies a modern human being that would be independent from the absolutist
power of religion and divine right aristocracy (the King losses his head,
God too) and epistemic all the knowledge are focussed on the modality of
existence this autonomous being, on the Reason relations he has with power
and the world.
(5) The equivalent of this chapter of ChangingŠin ConcreteŠ is to be found
in the Part II whose title is ³the search for a new architecture².
Especially in this sentence (translated) ³A new era as beginning and with it
³a new architecture² that was supposed to express it² (171). As in ChangingŠ
: ²Why then, was a new architecture so strrenuously demanded nearly half a
century too soon, when there was no immediate probabilily of its being
produce? (128). Or again : ³One of the most curious and far-reaching
phenomena of the mid-nineteenth century was the insistent and widespread
demand for a new architecture which reached its climax about 1853. After
that date, the idea became dormant for half a century, mainly because it
had by then become apparent that every argument had been expended without a
new architecture seaming any nearer ; (Š).² (ibid).
(6) ³The srivings of the historians to evolve a new architecture by analogy
with earlier architectures thus seemed to have failed ; but their failure
had at least one important result. It forced theorists to study the
heuristic possibilities of other kinds of analogy.² ChangingŠ, 145.
(7) ³Therefore the only kinds of analogy left were what we call Œfonctional
analogies¹: analogies with living organisms, machines, and body functions,
such as taste and speech. It is clear that these analogies were not an ideal
in themselves ; but Functionalism was, and this eventually became the most
important ideal of modern architecture.² ChangingŠ, 146.
(8) Especially this sentence : ³(Š) for in point of fact, it was impossible
for a truly new universal architecture to establish itself before the
invention of new structural systems, and this only occured in 1890s, with
the commercial development of steel and reinforced concrete frames.² my
underlining, ChangingŠ, 128.
(9) ChangingŠ, 199. According to Cesar Daly¹s prophecy, Collins gives the
following definition of the unprecedented theoretic importance of the
structural Rationalism he makes its own : ³ (Š) is still, and must always
be, the backbone of any valid architectural theory, (Š) ². It is the result
of a new Alliance between the architecture, the sentiment and the science.
And so: ³ It is still, therefore, an important subject of study even in the
present day.² ibid, p. 199.
(10) Collins : ³ As soon as in 1892, François Hennebique has patented his
reinforced concrete frame, it was only a matter of time before a talented
architect transforms this system of construction in a true architecture,
e.g. an architecture without any plating but worth its open participation to
a social and architectural environment.² Conservatoire National des Arts et
Métiers (23), my underlining.
(11) Collins: ³ Experience made us understand, now, that the main credit of
any true architecture is to be inserted in its environment without ruining
its essential characteristic. ² Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
(20), my underlining.
(12) Giambattista Vico, De la très ancienne philosophie des peuples
italiques (1710), trad by G. Mailhos and G. Granel, Paris : Ed. Mauvezin,
1982. Presentation and discussion by Charles T. Wolfe at the Sorbonne (and
actually teaching on Philosophy of Sciences @ Boston University) at the
Sorbonne published in L¹Observatoire de la Télévision,14, under the title
³La métaphysique poïétique de Giambattista Vico².
(13) ³Is neceforth considered as modern what allows a renewing actuality to
express the spirit of the time in an objective form. The own characteristic
of such works is a novelty taken-over and devalued by the renewal brought by
each style that comes after it. But while mere fashions go out of fashion
once they belong to the past, modernity maintains secret links with
classicism.² Epigraph from the catalogue of the Exhibition in the Autumn
Festival of Paris (30 septembre 1982) : La modernité un projet inachevé,
Paris, Editions du Moniteur, 1982, 7.
(14) ³Irresistibally the breaking of symetry, the fall of the One in the
multiple, the fracture of the One evoke a degradation, a theology of the
fall and successive emanations : from the emptiness comes the light and from
the light, the antagonistic pair of matter and antimatter. A struggle is
initiated that results in the triumph of what we call here matterŠHere the
analogy comes to an end because the great gnostic myth of the fall is
accompanied by a my the of redemption. Here any parallel comes to an end
because astrphysics is not a new doctrine of salvation.² In Michel Cassé, Du
vide et de la création, Paris, Ed. Odile Jacob, 181.
(15) Euclide the geometrician (ca 343-283 BC). This definition is excerpted
from Books V and VI of his Elements which present the theory of proportions
and its application to geometry. There we can read the geometric theory of
the golden number : ³one line is said to be cut in average and extreme
reason when the whole line is to the longest segment as the smaller is to
the shorter² (VI, 3), e.g. the continuous proportion:
AB - AC = AC CB = K or O.
(16) Thales may be born in 640 AD and Pythagoras in 580 AD. This definition
of the continuous geometric proportion and its poïetical uses are still
present in Plato¹s Timée, Théétète and The Republic. It is to be found in
Vitruve¹s Book, and in his Nicomaque of Gerase¹s Treaty of the Numbers whose
5th century translation by Boece is used throughout the Middle Ages and
appears again in the Renaissance in Alberti¹s Luca Pacioli¹s, Vinci¹s,
Palladio¹s, Vignole¹s etcŠ mathematical treaties applied to the world of the
Art and Fabrics. It is believed to be still present in Kepler, Descartes,
Leibnitz, Russel... not to mention Le Corbusier¹s Modulor and in some
stylish works by contemporary architects such as Ricardo Bofill and
Christian de Portzamparc, and without any doubt in some who deny it.
(17) For the Greeks in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, these judgements are
indistinctly qualitative (non-measurable according to the law of Similitude
but metaphorically institutive, amplifying) or quantitative (measurable,
physically or abstractly measurable according to the law of identity). The
Number that measures says : posotès or arithmos and epistemonicos arithmos
(the scientific number) is not ours any more; it has a geometric and spatial
value because it appears as points, planes, solids. This is because their
concept of abstract Number is not an abstract symbol but the very structure
of things. The number belongs to an esoteric mystique, a revealed belief in
an order of the World created by a deity, a sacred transcendental power:
³Technitès théos² or ³Technicos logos², the one, be it god or supreme logos
that artfully composes and reorders ³Chaos²: And then when the Whole has
started being ordered (Š) all these elements received from God their figure
through the action of Ideas and Figures.² Plato (Timée).
(18) An architectonic which , with and beyond a numerical and geometrical
(the regulating drawings), morphological and constructive proportionality
system which all of us know, the one of the Orders, recomposed by Vignole in
a 16th century Treaty, expresses this divine proportionality, this symbolic
matrix of a universal harmony. A matrix in which ‹all proportion considered‹
each creation is inserted, provided that it incorporates the rules of
symmetry and eurythmics, the modus and its basic unit, the modulus.
(19) The generic analogy, e.g. the first that constitutes and manages
gender, is also genealogical insofar as from a contingency that gives birth
to something the present being could always be deducted from this something.
This can also be called a metaphysics of the origin. It tends to be invested
in a theological relation of belief.
(20) God, World Architecture, Architect are under a two-fold law of
analogy. In the area of the measurable the law of identity is ruling and the
copule of proportion that links the relations is the ³equal ² sign, thus
funding a considerable arithmology but also so-called mathematical or
scientific aesthetics. In the area of the measurable, the law of similitude
is prevailing under the sign ³is an homologue of², a non-codified sign but
the most largely empirically active and non-objectified by measure. It is
especially this relation of generalised homology that under all the inducted
(spatial, ontological, structural, causal, morphological, veridictory, etcŠ)
metaphorical forms, rules the understandings of a universal order created
out of Chaos. A Factor of universal Harmony, the relation of homology has
probably been one of the most powerful invention structures in our culture.
(21) See J.-M. Schaeffer, L¹Art de l¹âge moderne, Paris: Gallimard (1992),
which calls it a speculative theory of art. It would remain alive in spite
of all the efforts to ³deconstruct² this metaphysics, from Nietzsche,
Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, etcŠ
Sachez que l'on n'oublie pas de vous citer. A bientôt !
|||]|]|]]|]||]|||]|]|]|]|]]|]]|]|]]]||||||]]]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
A C T U A L I T É D E S A U T E U R S E T D E L A R E V U E
théma-anachronique pluridisciplinaire http://www.criticalsecret.com
|||]|]|]]|]||]|||]|]|]|]|]]|]]|]|]]]||||||]]]|]]|]]]]]|]]|]|]]|]|]|]|]|]]]]]
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 31 May 2003 05:40:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: Deb King <debkking@yahoo.com>
Subject: mark(s) 4.01 now available
mark(s) 4.01 features
New paintings by Martyn Bouskila, an essay by Amelia Jones on the late
Hannah Wilke, three poems by Joel Levise, Melanie Manos'
*Hardware Store* and a new excerpt from *From a Broken Bottle Traces of
Perfume Still Emanate, Volume IV* by Nathaniel Mackey.
www.http://www.markszine.com
This site requires a minimum screen resolution of 800x600 for viewing
If links in this message do not work in your email browser, please paste
http://www.markszine.com into the location bar of your browser.
a postMedia publicaton
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 13:16:42 +0800
From: "C. Robbins" <cpr@mindspring.com>
Subject: Mirage v 1.0 + Opening: June 8th
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Apologies for any cross - postings!
=46or Immediate Release
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
The Mirage Series. V 1.0 ,
a series of new large-scale digital images
by Christiane Robbins
included in
The 2002-3 C.O.L.A. Fellowship Award Exhibition
at the Newly Renovated Barnsdale Art Park
June 4 - July 27, 2003,
Artist Reception - Sunday, June 8, - 2- 5 PM
It has been said that we are disappearing into Images.
It might also be said that
~It was always intended to be this way.~
The Mirage Series, v1.0 premiere's as part of the C.O.L.A.2003
Individual Artist Fellowships Exhibition at LA's Barnsdale Park.
Based upon the narrative complexities and geometric topologies of the
world(s) in which we find ourselves living, the Mirage Series
considers the collision of our material, cinematic, virtual and
telematic conditions via Frank Gehry's latest architectural project
in Los Angeles - the Disney Concert Hall.
Robbins has been intrigued with the construction and development of
this most recent development project of the Los Angeles brandscape,
=46rank Gehry's Disney Concert Hall. In the fall of 2001, when the
events of 9/11 so dominated the mediated images and narratives of the
time, Robbins was simultaneously capturing the Pavilion's
construction through a series of digitally manipulated images - The
Mirage Series. In this series, Robbins maps the process of it's
representational structural development interleaved with the
hyper-cinematic lens of special effects. Ultimately, she conceives of
the Disney Hall Concert Hall as summoning an excess of narratives,
especially those
cinematic traces of Los Angeles, which speak to simultaneous moments
of utopia and dystopia .
The Concert Hall, itself, is a direct product of proprietary
technologies - CATIA - a complex three-dimensional, numeric surface
and solids, modeling software program. This was originally developed
for application in the French aerospace industries by Dassault
Systemes in the production of their Mirage jet fighter and
subsequently used in film animation, thus speaking to an underlying
query into the ubiquitous presence of the MET (military -
entertainment - technology) Group.
The entire project, Blue Screen_MOTO, becomes emblematic of an
existence in LA today where realities have been rendered unstable.
We might only verify our "real" status via memory clips of
experienced events - the contrast allowing (de)/(re) orientation in
present living time-space. Mimicking the amplified worlds of
radiant spatial geometries, Los Angeles is easily a hybrid circuitous
replay of the production designs of science fiction and
mallification. In many ways Los Angeles can be read as a game of
"SimCity =AA played by a maniac, a satirical dystopia too whacked out
to be anything but real.
The notion of the city has become a "pre-historic" concept to the
digerati - pre-historic in the sense that real cities date from a
time before virtuality, and as such, are little more than the
inspiration for further examples of dungeons and dragons Gothic ruins
- - or the cyber clich=E9s of a post-apocalyptic society - or the
desolate rural settlements where New Agers have transformed the stock
character actors of 70s Americana into a cast of the living dead.
The contemporary post-humanist, post-Matrix environment personified
by LA is almost a virtual world - it has no actual texture, no actual
age and no actual sense of decay - just planned, episodic
obsolescence ... and serial resurrection. Within this everlasting
present, the sense of a place is so real ... that it is unreal ... it
is overpowering. The sense of place is so parlous, so fragmentary,
that it has become synonymous with its'
digitalized celluloid inscriptions ...
In the globalized circulation of images, the belief in things which
we know have no substance, is only surpassed by our ability to enjoy
them in spite of this knowledge ... and perhaps all the more so.
Blue Screen_MOTO is, essentially, an inquiry to the pleasures and
jeopardy of these modes of imaginary living within an aesthetic of a
hyper-stylization and mediated realities - a process of reading
things as simulations but knowing at the same time that they are
quite real.
____________________________
Robbins is known for her studio practice which focuses primarily on
digital media
video, installation, as well as architectural and public projects. Much of =
her
studio practice and scholarly interests revolve around issues of
media analysis, identity and displacement through an examination of
the way in which concepts and perceptions of reception, inscription,
spectacle, memory, space/place, and time shape the articulation of
subjectivities.
She has received international recognition as a cross disciplinary
artist including one-person shows in theU.S., Canada and Europe.
Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Art Forum, Wired
and the LA Times. She has also participated in numerous
international film and video festivals winning several awards,
including the Best of Category Award at the San Francisco
International Film Festival, and has been broadcast on American
Public Television, Channel 4, UK, and cablecast throughout the world.
Her work is found in numerous permanent collections including the
Stedlijck Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Kitchen,
NY, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art. She received her MFA at The California Institute of the Arts in
1989and is currently an Associate Professor at USC.
Each year the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department (CAD) offers
the prestigious City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Individual Artist Fellowship
Awards to approximately 12 literary, media, performing, and visual artists.
The visual artists in the C.O.L.A. 2002-03 Individual Artist
=46ellowships Exhibition include Deborah G. Aschheim, Andrea Bowers,
Christiane Robbins, Connie Samaras, Lothar Schmitz, SusanSilton, Pae
White and Norman Yonemoto. The designers are Gere Davanaugh and
Garland Kirkpatrick and the performance artist is Heidi Duckler. For
further information: http://www.culturela.org/grants/cag.htm
Barnsdale Art Park is located at 4800 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90027
at Berendo Street (just West of Vermont). The LA Municipal Art Gallery is
open Wednesday - Sunday from 12noon until 5:00pm.
=A9
- --
Christiane Robbins
JETZTZEIT
Los Angeles I San Francisco
California, USA
323.666.0552
415.648.0369
- - Jetztzeit -
" ... the space between zero and one."
Walter Benjamin
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 18:59:55 -0400
From: Are Flagan <areflagan@transcodex.net>
Subject: (Announcer) transcodex
t d
t d
tttt rrrr aa nnn sss cc oo ddd ee x x
t rr a n n s c c o o d d e e x x
t r aaa n n ss c c o o d d eeee x
t r a a n n s c c o o d d e x x
t r aaa n n sss cc oo ddd ee x x
:
> http://www.transcodex.net
:
> distro of announcement
:
rhizome/netartreview/nettime/syndicate/e-kunst/fw: please
:
Transcodex is a project exploring the transcoding principle of computer
media. Transcoding refers broadly to the ability of numerically encoded data
objects to migrate and morph across traditional media divides, such as
image/sound/text. It equally references the digitization of culture and
society. This magical capacity is arguably the most radical, and perhaps
disconcerting, aspect of new media. The project currently consists of
several parts and will involve future phases.
:
> binary/image/sound/text
:
Brief and basic technical explanations of how computers work with numbers
and thereby converse across traditional (material) media divides via binary
encoding.
:
> thematically compiled net.art and software works by
:
Paul Tulipana and Sean Whalen
Barbara Lattanzi
Vuk Cosic
Peter Traub
Mark Daggett
Gonzalo Garcia-Perate
Cory Arcangel
Mark Napier
Lew Baldwin and Charlie Killian
Paul Andrews
Ralf Baecker
Gregory Chatonsky
BlueScreen
Pall Thayer
Jason Freeman
..//modukit+
Dyske Suematsu
Amy Alexander and Peter Traub
Daniel Young
SAS design and Radio Taxis
W. Bradford Paley
Chris Otto
Gicheol Lee
Helen Evans
Miguel Leal and Luis Sarmento
Pete Everett
Peter Luining
:
> transcodex (v.0.7)
:
A 9000-word, currently lightly illustrated, essay thoroughly exploring the
historical and cultural roots of transcoding. Providing an alternative, or
at least neglected, view of new media, it considers coding an extension of
early linguistic practices that evolved into advanced mathematical-logical
notation and later computation. The findings of the research have
implications for how transcoding is understood within the narrow context of
computation and also for how the underlying desire to perfect translation,
involving both notions of a unique parameter language and a flawless
understanding across tongues and cultures, has shaped the discourses of East
and West.
:
> re:codex
:
The open space inviting new links and connections on the
transcoding/transcodex themes.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 18:43:29 +0200
From: "Christian Fuchs" <christian.fuchs4@chello.at>
Subject: Buchneuerscheinung: Informatik und Gesellschaft
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Christian Fuchs und Wolfgang Hofkirchner (2003)
Studienbuch Informatik und Gesellschaft
Norderstedt. Libri Books on Demand.
ISBN 3-8330-0252-2. 444 Seiten (Gro=DFformat)
=20
Die Entwicklung der Produktivkraefte des Kapitalismus ist in eine Phase =
eingetreten, die auf Grund der zunehmenden Bedeutung des Wissens und der =
neuen Medien haeufig als Informationsgesellschaft beschrieben wird. Eine =
vereinheitlichte Theorie der Informationsgesellschaft und der aktuellen =
Veraenderungen des Kapitalismus ist bisher aber ausstaendig. Mit diesem =
Buch legen wir den Versuch einer solchen Begruendung vor.
Im Fach Informatik und Gesellschaft wird ueber die Informatik =
reflektiert mit Mitteln, die aus den Gesellschaftswissenschaften kommen. =
Das Fachgebiet beschaeftigt sich mit den Zusammenhaengen und =
Wechselwirkungen von Informationstechnik und gesellschaftlichen =
Strukturen und Handlungen. Es umfasst einen Gestaltungs- und einen =
Wirkungsaspekt: Technikentwicklung wird als gesellschaftlicher Prozess =
erforscht und die Folgen der Technik in der Gesellschaft werden =
analysiert. Dieses Buch behandelt wichtige Themen aus Informatik und =
Gesellschaft wie z. B. den Informationsbegriff, den Medienbegriff, den =
Technikbegriff, den Gesellschaftsbegriff, Theorien der =
Informationsgesellschaft, Medien/Informationstechnik und =
gesellschaftliche Veraenderung, den Zusammenhang von Technik und =
Gesellschaft, Information und Selbstorganisation.
Teil I beschaeftigt sich mit Empirischem. Er enthaelt Ansichten unserer =
informationsgesellschaftlichen Realitaet aus unterschiedlichen =
Blickwinkeln. Diese Erscheinungen bilden zwar den Ausgangspunkt jeder =
Betrachtung, fuer sich genommen ergeben sie aber noch kein =
zusammenhaengendes Bild. Teil II beschaeftigt sich mit Theoretischem. Er =
beansprucht, Einsichten in den Erkenntnisgegenstand zu entwickeln, indem =
er bei den abstraktesten theoretischen Bestimmungen beginnt =
(Information), Schritt fuer Schritt weniger abstrakte einfuehrt und =
miteinander verknuepft (Gesellschaft - Technik - Informationstechnik - =
Technik und Gesellschaft - Informationsgesellschaft), um schlie=DFlich =
bei einem konkreten Verstaendnis des Zusammenhangs der empirischen =
Erscheinungen zu enden (Informationstechnik und =
Informationsgesellschaft). Teil III beschaeftigt sich mit Praktischem. =
Er gibt einen Ausblick auf Absichten, die in die Tat umgesetzt werden =
muessen, um den Weg in eine solidarische globale =
Informationsgesellschaft freizumachen.=20
=20
Weitere Informationen (Inhalt etc.) unter: =
http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/iugbuch.html
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