<nettime> transhumance & nomadism

[akademie@solitude.s.shuttle.de (calin dan)]

b. Interaction. Interaction is about tactics & boredom. Interaction can
exploit boredom or just annihilate it 4 a while. The explicit role of
interaction is responding 2 information by re-directioning/re-generating
data streams.
There are famous examples of both war interactivity and boredom in history,
but maybe the most striking is the case of the 18 century maneuver wars,
which were sometimes moving armies around like in a chess game, victory
coming by a new order in the field, and not by direct contact. Interaction
seems 2 be the same: bloodless and distant.
And yet, interaction as understood today is less about dialogue than about
power. It comes closer to war than to art or it belongs to the point of
incidence between the two. Its procedures can be tagged as: 1.
transhumance; 2. nomadism.

1. Transhumance defines an interaction based on the procedure of opening
gates: the user is traveling through successive points of disclosure, which
are simultaneously path marks and reward providers. The term of reward is
an ambiguity, since the travel and the deployment of the path are rewards
by themselves. What matters here is the conflictual nuance of transhumance.
Transhumance is a limited invasion operated by semi self-sufficient groups
in quest of limited reward. Although not compulsory, the way back is always
possible. And @ any moment, a balance between the starting point and the
point of action is maintained. The back & forth movement of the user is
mimicked by an environment which actually does not offer any novelty or
dynamics, but just a deceiving loop of information.

2. Nomadism introduces a paradigm of chaos and direct response. The warfare
model of pitched battle, characteristic to the Western mentalities/culture
and the older tactics of indirect attack, avoidance, faked retreat and
surprise blows are combined here in a mixture of response and provocation.
The user is invited in new spaces by the apparent submission of the
machine, just to be hit back by a reaction meant to bring things @ the
initial point.

There is no more dialogue in nomadic interaction than real movement in the
transhumant one. Both are aiming actually @ the same thing : stirring up
emotions under the overload of data.
The short span of attention separating interactivity & inactivity is
defined precisely by the border between excitement & boredom. In
interactivity, as in war, contemplation brings boredom, and boredom brings
danger, since it limits the capacities of reaction. The avoidance of this
impasse is tried now through

Calin Dan
Akademie Schloss "Solitude"
Studio 22
Solitude 3
D-70197 Stuttgart
T: + 49 711 69 930 122
F: + 49 711 69 930 150
ONLY Receive mail: calin @ euronet.nl 


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