[rumori] new thread

Boster, Bob [rumori] new thread
Fri, 7 Aug 1998 17:01:37 -0700 (00902563297, c=US%a=_%p=HIII%l=MAIN_SERVER-980808000137Z-4422ATserver2.orban.com)



I've been thinking a lot about the fundamental differences between the
kind of work that comes out of processes involving appropriation and
those where a practitioner is attempting to reveal a vision from her/his
imagination. Then I got involved in this new-ish (latest?) Bruce
Sterling novel, _Holy Fire_. Interesting scree in there about the
discrepancy between art and artifice, which might apply to the above
thread. Note that he does a good job of undercutting this stuff with
some grounded attacks but I'm not able to include them here...I've cut
down to the core statements... I won't try to make sense out of his use
of the idea posthuman (if you're interested enough, read the novel -
it's worth the time). Suffice it to say, in the novel they've managed to
extend the normal human life span to something in the neighborhood of
125 years, with some folks lasting longer.

"The destruction of the human condition offers us an avalanche of novel creative approaches. Those possibilities must be assimilated and
systematically deployed by the heirs of humanity. Artifice is not Art.
Although it deploys the imagination of the preconscious, it recognizes
that the imagination of the unconscious is impoverished. We honor the
irrationality of the creative impulse, but we deny the primacy or even
the relevancy of hallucination. We harness the full power of conscious
rationality and the scientific method in pursuit of the voluntary
destruction and supercession of human culture."
"The human condition is over. Nature is over. Art is over. Consciousness is ductile. Science is an infinite powder keg. We
confront a new reality formerly obscured by the inbuilt limits of
mammalian primates. We must create work which brings this new reality
to the surface, a sequence of seemingly gratuitous gestures which will
form in their aggregate the consciousness of posthumanity. At the same
time, politically, we must not shatter the fragile surface tension of an
aging human civilization which pretends to utopian tranquillity but is
secretly traumatized beyond all possibility of healing. Beneath the
repellent husk of the dying humanist agenda, we must systematically
alter the physiological basis of cognition and the state of culture, and
bear an honest, objective, and unpretentious witness to the results.
That is the nature of our program as artificers."
"We must prepare to take creative possession of the coming epoch. An epoch so poetically rich, so boundlessly victorious, so charged with
meaning, that only those prepared to bathe in cataclysm will transcend
the singularity. Someday, we will render powerless all hatred of the
marvelous. The admirable thing about the fantastic is that the
contained is becoming the container, the fantastic irresistibly
infiltrates the quotidian. It is only a matter of time, and time is our
one inexhaustible resource. There is no more strength left in normality
there are only routines."

Of course this is totally bullshit and completely insightful at the same
time, like so many other brilliant pieces of scree... but I thought it
might spark some discussion.. Of course I'm off-line until Monday
anyway, so it'll get to build a real head of steam before I get to
rejoin. Any thoughts? Is this in any way relevant?

Bob

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