Re: <documenta X><blast> Index: FLUID GEOGRAPHIES

Brandon Van Every (vanevery@blarg.net)
Wed, 3 Sep 1997 11:50:22 -0700

> From: Morgan Garwood <mgarwood@inch.com>
> for these reframings ? My feeling is that were don't exist in a dark ages
> comparable to the end of the roman empire; this time is one of great
> literalism, it is the age of formulas, it has no poetry, it is pure,
> streamlined prosaic business plan for the path of least resistance... it
is
> clean, somewhat akin to the sterility of the compact disk sound, wholly
> lacking in the low volume fractal bed background murmurs of a living
> world... the dark ages were noisy as hell, and as septic... really the
> opposite of our problem today... they had a howling wilderness to
navigate,
> we have a freshly dressed pavement of ice....

A lot of people move beyond the streamlined reality by taking up "old"
arts. Wikken, paganism, yoga, kung fu... plenty of examples. I'm one of
the kung fu guys. It has changed the way I relate to the world, how I
sense it, it can bring joy, it also pisses me off, makes me deal with my
fears and find out who I am. It is immune to being packaged and
commodified, at least, as it is taught by my Sifu.

Then there are those who try to move beyond the frontiers of the "new"
reality. There are algorithms and formulas that are not so soulless. Some
describe the complexity of the exponential recombination of the universe.
(For a modest attempt at this, check out some of the recent Usenet posts in
rec.arts.int-fiction about "Nonlinearity.") Some attempt to pierce the
boundaries of the universe through dialogue (this forum.) I will feel
happy when I have finally set up computers that shatter the boundaries of
the universe. That is their potential. It may or may not make $$$$, but
there is certainly the potential to make the system break free of itself
through a rippling effect. Like an Aikido player moving with someone's
energy rather than against it, amplifying it. But it takes a certain
perserverence in the face of the "dampening factors" that the real world
constantly throws at us. So much energy can be sucked into voids, which is
why people so often fall into the path of least resistance.

Cheers,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery@blarg.net> DEC Commodity Graphics
http://www.blarg.net/~vanevery Windows NT Alpha OpenGL
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