The great battle of Art is the struggle against conformity. Artists throughout the ages overthrow the models of their time. Debussy blew apart music. Duchamp challenged the concept of what art can be.
The only thing left to reject is technology completely.
The Rejectionist Manifesto is, plainly:
Rejection of computers, and thus;
Rejection of the Internet.
We have never seen more bad art in the history of humanity. The Apple Macintosh is, in fact, the death of Art. iPod's and P2P make music value-less. The ease with which anyone can make music creates mass meaningless music. There are billions of tracks on-line. Video is rampant, the horror of Youtube is example of this. There has never been more conformity in the history of art than in the plague that is MySpace.
The Maximalist age ends with the rejection of the computer.
Rejectionism is a social rejection.
It rejects social networking websites.
It rejects video games.
It rejects television.
It recalls The Situationist Internationale and the Society of the Spectacle.
Rejectionism is a philosophical movement.
Rejectionists do not create any 'art'.
The internet killed artists.
Art is dead.
Manifesto
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Type: discussion
Comments
Then I guess we won't be hearing from you again. Or will you keep using the evil machine to dialogue on the evil network behind the evil facade of a pseudonymous identity? Or are you baiting us? Are you really just one of us, bored and trying to stir up a bit of conflict so as to pass the time away in front of monitor instead of doing other more important things like bathing or eating after dinner mints. Will you grace us with your virtual presence some more, or will you drop your "cyber"-bomb and return to the "real world," never to be heard from again? Believe me when I say, I am tingling with anticipation!
Here's what's dead – the modernist myth of manifestos, revolutions, and radical ruptures from the past; the idea that the technology of the computer differs from the technology of the ball peen hammer in any capacity other than scale. As has been argued, a p2p network in and of itself is more intriguing than any single file shared on it. The only thing more boring that art mimetically representing networks (aka. net art about net art) is art ideologically opposing art mimetically representing networks (aka. anti-net art). "Art should imitate nature in its function rather than its appearance" (an imitation of the appearance of something Mr. Cage once wrote). The network itself functions – as art:
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/22
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/87/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/78/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/228/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/98/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/97/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/290/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/302/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/42/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/54/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/155/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/85/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/107/
http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/108/
You've got to swim in the spectacle to detourn it. You can't throw your boot into the factory machine without a bare foot on the factory floor. Anti-spectacularization is the "revolutiotnary's" role in the spectacle. The revolution will always be televised. A post on a net art bulletin board "rejecting" net art – welcome to the spectacle.
I'm thankful Debord didn't reject television. Otherwise we would have never had:
http://www.ubu.com/film/debord_spectacle.html
Actually, I don't care about any of these things. Maybe you are right. Maybe "computers" are the "death" of "Art."
However I do take "vehement" exception to your categorical "dis" of youTube. To categorically dis youTube is to implicitly dis Dan Deacon and Liam Lynch's epic "Drinking Out of Cups," the best "piece" of "art" on the "interweb" in "years."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skCV2L0c6K0
As Warhol is my witness, such an insult SHALL NOT STAND! I defy you to try and make it stand!
Your Affectionate Uncle,
Tommy Noble
Interesting post (as always), Curt.
I had been thinking recently about how Virgil's program for the training of a poet – to write only about Nature for 10 years before moving on to other concerns – might be applied to the training of a net artist. How the hell would one do that? I think you're John Cage quote gives a good start:
"Art should imitate nature in its function rather than its appearance."
Vijay
"Here's what's dead – the modernist myth of manifestos, revolutions, and radical ruptures from the past; the idea that the technology of the computer differs from the technology of the ball peen hammer in any capacity other than scale. "
Curt, the computer is *not* simply a glorified media machine. It is not simply a glorified typewriter or stereo or television or whatever.
Here is an example of why this is true.
There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are thought processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. Which is to say that rather than simply being a glorified media machine, software is probably as flexible as thought itself.
Software can re-write its own code. Can learn. Can build a world view.
It's important that people who purport to think about digital art understand this. Because if you think that "the technology of the computer differs from the technology of the ball peen hammer" only in "scale", then what you think digital is and can be will be simply traditional art.
ja
http://vispo.com
"There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are thought processes of which humans are capable and computers are not." -j.a.
Or conversely – there is no proof, and probably never will be, that computers are capable of all human thought processes. It's largely an academic, semantic argument hinging on one's understanding of anthropology. It has less to do with what computers are pragmatically capable of and more to do with how one defines what it is to be human. Usually, the more one thinks "A.I." is possible/has happened/will happen, the weaker one's estimation of humans.
Anyway, there is a lot more to being in the world than "thought processes."
I think you misunderstand what I mean by "scale." I'm not dissing computer tech so much as pointing out its continuity with hammer tech. Hammers radicalize our way of being in the world. Computers exponentially radicalize our way of being in the world. As if one could be nostalgic for the former and demonize the latter (a la Heidegger). As if one could trivialize the former and utopianize the latter.
I don't care about "digital art" or "traditional art." I care about using whatever is at hand to make the art I want to make – digital, analog, mechanical, biological, neural, lingual, play-dough-ial.
There is no proof but there is a perfectly respectable (and for me clinching) philosophical argument.
Computers are not glorified media machines but glorified adding machines. Even when they rewrite their own code they do it only in accordance with human instruction at some remove.
On the other hand human beings are *embodied* intelligences - we don't just process logical operations, in fact that forms a relatively small percentage of what we do.
We feel, we smell coffee, we speak, we love, we make puns, we piss, we shit, we fight, we feel hungry, we view cherry blossom, our feet feel numb in our boots in the snow even with two pairs of socks, we experience sexual desire, we sicken and we eventually die.
Were we not so constituted our intelligence would be other than what it is - it is our physical being in the world that ultimately determines the nature of the use of such logical operations that we do have in common with the computer. Our processing always takes place through our physicality and the need to sustain that physical existence.
This is of particular importance in art but it applies generally.
Were it possible to make a machine that replicated all this you would not have a machine - you would have made a human being.
On a smaller note, not for the first, or I suspect the last, time, I'm in complete agreement with Curt on the artistic question, not only for philosophical but also practical reasons. If we want to be big "digital" fish in a tiny digital ghetto, fine. If we want to make *art* then we have to let go of the comfort blanket of asserting that some number crunching or logical skils or the ability to read a technical instruction manual grant us special artistic privilege.
Hi Jim,
I don't know where you are going with the Bible and Darwin. Humans are embodied along with their knowledge (as Mr. Szpakowski so poetically described). I don't need the Bible or Darwin to tell me that.
On embodied knowledge:
Johnson, Mark. 2007. The meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
On embodied language:
Kenneally, Christine. 2007. The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language. New York: Viking.
On scalar technological differences:
Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
I agree with you that computers are more than glorified typewriters and glorified adding machines. You are arguing against a straw man (who "squirts ink").
What is "traditional media" to you? Fluxus? Beuys' social sculpture? Chris Burden's performance art? Marcel Broodthaers' institutional critique? Sol Lewitt's instruction-based drawings? David Wilson's "Museum of Jurassic Technology?" None of these artists use computers (altough Lewitt and Fluxus artists like Brecht do use a kind of code). Are these artists "traditional" to you? Do you lump them with abstract expressionist painters? Is the dividing line between "traditional" and "non-traditional" drawn along "digital" and "analog" lines? Right now I use code and software in my work because they help me explore language and time. But I also use my voice, my physical body, and my Rhodes electro-mechanical keyboard because they help me explore language and time. If by some bizarre turn of events I discover that oil paint helps me explore language and time, then I'll use it.
Peace,
Curt
Towards a Radical Anti Social Art
The time for art has come to denounce its bond with society and to reflect on art itself.
Art has come a long way from the its middle aged allegations with religions institutions, and regaining some of its magic and ritual origins , during the Renaissance.
During the Enlightment its bond went alongside with the development of early capitalism and thes bond is pronounced until to date
As a consequence of the parallel development of capitalism and the socialication of art, art looses its fundaments with its ritual and magical origins.
During that process, in which as a side effect capitalism got rid of magic and ritual by classifying it under religion, art was put at the side of governing power, and agresively untied.
Nowadays artists are not able to distibguish between the aesthecial and ethical responsibilities the crafting of a work of art implies, and ignorantly think and behave as if they are not the governers of these responsablities.
The aesthetical and the ethical is taken over by social institutions , governments, administrations and the like.
The autonomous position it should have is ignorantly left behind ans easely sold for beauty and lust.
The word holy has no meaning anymore, rationalzing , researches the effects of city regeneartion,. researching culture as another form of commodity, sell, profibility, return on investment have replaced this.
The only creative attitude opossible is a copmplete rejection of every connection with society, when society is unbale to govern aeasthetical and ethical values. Then it is time to protect yourselves.
This time has come. The tine to completely untie every bond with society for art saek. No more falsifying reality views no more hypes no more social software no more web 2,0 noi more creativee ciries no more second life no mote mtv no more glasow no more docklands m=no more art councils no more medi lbs no me=ore citizens participations no morte
It is the return of the Holy Horsemen , the return of the shingn lights , the sparkling star the wet meadows, the dirty feet, the dirty hands, the smell, the rotten fleshm the darrk cornerts, the inappropiate behavgiuors, the subversions, the strewm of consciuopsnes/
The manifeswt the stutter the incomplete the half build thje imperfections, the abnortmal the lunatics the insane , the wise , th eholy, the readers, the seeers the dooers,, the hearese.
Aesthecical Abuses of Truth
Abusive Aesthetics of Truth
True Abusive Aestehtics
True Aesthetical Abuses
A. Andreas - Novemberer 2007
"Or conversely – there is no proof, and probably never will be, that computers are capable of all human thought processes. It's largely an academic, semantic argument hinging on one's understanding of anthropology. It has less to do with what computers are pragmatically capable of and more to do with how one defines what it is to be human."
Actually, Curt, it's a question of the nature of the mechanisms of thought. Not anthropology.
"Usually, the more one thinks "A.I." is possible/has happened/will happen, the weaker one's estimation of humans."
That's the sort of thing that was and sometimes still is said of Darwin's ideas. That they reflect a low estimation of humans. But it's obvious now that isn't so. We require no recourse to the bible to understand the biological history of life on earth. Neither do we require recourse to the bible or God to understand the mechanisms of memory and thought.
I don't think you've clarified what you mean by "scale". You squirt ink.
ja
http://vispo.com
Sorry - meant of course to post the following *here*. But that's another thing about humans -we make miskakes, um..imstakes
m.
There is no proof but there is a perfectly respectable (and for me clinching) philosophical argument.
Computers are not glorified media machines but glorified adding machines. Even when they rewrite their own code they do it only in accordance with human instruction at some remove.
On the other hand human beings are *embodied* intelligences - we don't just process logical operations, in fact that forms a relatively small percentage of what we do.
We feel, we smell coffee, we speak, we love, we make puns, we piss, we shit, we fight, we feel hungry, we view cherry blossom, our feet feel numb in our boots in the snow even with two pairs of socks, we experience sexual desire, we sicken and we eventually die.
Were we not so constituted our intelligence would be other than what it is - it is our physical being in the world that ultimately determines the nature of the use of such logical operations that we do have in common with the computer. Our processing always takes place through our physicality and the need to sustain that physical existence.
This is of particular importance in art but it applies generally.
Were it possible to make a machine that replicated all this you would not have a machine - you would have made a human being.
On a smaller note, not for the first, or I suspect the last, time, I'm in complete agreement with Curt on the artistic question, not only for philosophical but also practical reasons. If we want to be big "digital" fish in a tiny digital ghetto, fine. If we want to make *art* then we have to let go of the comfort blanket of asserting that some number crunching or logical skils or the ability to read a technical instruction manual grant us special artistic privilege.
The question before us is whether digital art is just basically media art on a glorified media machine.
Of course it can be. That's mostly what people do. They write texts that could be published in books or create videos that don't require a computer or create sound files that could be records or images that could be on paper and so on. Fine. Fly at it.
Curt said "Here's what's dead – the modernist myth of manifestos, revolutions, and radical ruptures from the past; the idea that the technology of the computer differs from the technology of the ball peen hammer in any capacity other than scale."
I think it's important for people trying to create art with computers to understand something about computers. At least if they are trying to create work that can reasonably be regarded as computer art.
Namely that computers are not simply glorified media machines different only in scale from non-programmable devices. What's at stake is the notion of what digital art can be. If you think computers are glorified typewriters or adding machines, then you'll happily create work that's basically traditional media.
And that's fine. Just don't tell me that it can't be something quite different from that. That's just wrong.
ja
http://vispo.com
CAN YOU HELP ME IF 'THEY' ARREST ME BECAUSE OF MEDIA ART DEMOCRACY?
VIA INTERNET…
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
ALWAYS FOR RADICAL SOLLUTIONS
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]FROM OUR POSSITION THERE'S NO PROBLEMS AT ALL[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]OUCH!WROOOOM!BANG!CRUNCH![/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=150]MY DOG BARK MY SECRET THOUGHTS[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]CRISSIS[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]EJACULATION IN UNIVERSE[/b][/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]"I LOVE MY MOTHER"[/size]
AND
"REVOLUTION"
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]SCALABLE ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS[/size]
[size=150]COULD YOU HELP US AT ALL?
YOUR WORDS ARE WORTHLESS LIKE OURS…
BUT…
COULD YOU HELP US WHEN *THEY* ARRESST US?
THAT'S THE QUESTION.
ALL OTHER'S INTELELECTUAL EXERSCISING.[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]MANIK'S IN DANGER.
DID YOU PREAPAIRE TO HELP MANIK
NO METTER OF OUR
POSSIBLE *IDEOLOGIGICAL*
'MISSUNDERSTANDING?
ARE YOU PREAPIRE TO HELP MANIK BECAUSE WE ARE
ARTIST?
SURROUND ANSWER-YES or NO.[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=150]MANIK'S GOING TO BE SUICIDE BOMBER.
WE PROMISE NO ONE MAN FROM *WEST*
WON'T BE HURT.
ARE YOU READY TO THINK ABOUT MANIK'S DESCISION
LIKE SOMETHING YOU COULD ACCEPT?
SURROUND ANSWER
YES or NO[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=150]IF WE ACCEPT YOUR 'MANIFESTO'
ARE YOU READY TO ACCEPT
OUR *BOMBER* CONCEPT?[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=150]RADICAL MUSTN'T BE 'THE END'
IT COULD BE DIFFERENT…
ARE YOU AWARE OF THAT?[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
[size=200]WE THOUGHT:
"SHIT HAPPENS TO OTHER PEOPLE!"[/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
"The great battle of Art is the struggle against conformity"
Oh really? thats all that art is?
art does not reject, especially not its models.
[size=150]FUCK ME BABY YEAHHHHH!!!!![/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
Oooo… big text… exclamation points…
…way to be.
My inbox hurts.
[size=150]MY HART HURTS[/color][/size]
MANIK,MARCH 2008.
Considering my email client does not do html, there is now finally a reason to like the mailing list that one must go to the web to read. Thanks Manik!
"Rejection" is too easy, I'm instantly bored by it. I'm so bored I can't even reject your rejection. However MANIK is rejection of principle he is thought monster of demon head he is instant acceptance of power theory he is 100 times more heavy industry than light industries he is internet red clay; and butter machine manifesto combined. MANIK is lazarus raised from the corn script.
SteveANDStevie
"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response[1] or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.[2]" - definition from the mighty wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
I have to admit, I'm a bit bored… but plenty of this thread relates to the above… and really, that's not all that interesting… so I guess I'm still bored. sigh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiX7GTelTPM
Hi Curt,
It's true, of course, that our embodiment and its nature inform human thought and experience ever so deeply. To the bone. But we can easily imagine creatures with totally different physiologies as being sentient moral agents. Thinking isn't something specific to humans. It's also true that we are wondrous in our capacity for sentient thought. But we aren't diminished by the notion that all that wonderous capability is fundamentally the operation of an amazing machine (what else could we possibly be???). One simply needs to raise one's consciousness about what a machine can be rather than thinking it's limited to a non-thinking realm.
And that also changes how one views the horizons of digital art.
But the horizons of digital art are not simply determined by the capacity of machines to think. Thinking is but an example of the capabilities of machines, albeit a totally impressive one.
The horizons of digital art are not even limited by our imaginations. Because emergent behaviors can be unanticipatable.
This is not 'utopian'. I'm not saying this is all for the good. I'm not saying it's all for the worse. I'm simply saying that the horizons of digital art are radically different from the horizons of non-programmable art.
ja
http://vispo.com
Hi Jim,
I would love to see more A.I. experimentation happening with the assumption that knowledge is embodied rather than disembodied. Ironically, the idea that one could "upload onesself" as code is influenced by residual quasi-Christian medieval dualistic gnosticism that (wrongly) divorces mind and body. It assumes that humans are essences rather than embodied processes, and that these essences can be reductively encoded. If one starts with these assumptions, one is going to head down an entirely different research and art-making path than if one starts with other assumptions.
One thing our brief dialogue has illuminated is that one's presuppositions about what it is to be human radically influence not only the type of art one makes, but the way in which one approaches the histories and taxonomies of art itself.
I agree that algorithms make certain moves in art more feasible, and this can lead to new places in artmaking. But ultimately, art is about people being in the world, and all that such being entails. If computers lead to hermetically sealed algorithmic experiments that lose connection with cultures/natures/languages, then the paradigmatic presumption of disembodied essences will have led to a kind of disembodied, metaphysical art that becomes increasingly irrelevant to embodied human agents. Manik are right to perpetually ask – how does any of this theory ultimately address our life in this specific political situation? I think it is a fair thing for "western" "academics" to be reminded of.
Best,
Curt
hello all,
there actually have been loads of news in the fields of artificial intelligence and on the research of human mind, on conscience, on thought and (wonderfully) on empathy.
and most of them come out from neuro-sciences, more than from computers and technology (or, better, news happening in neurosciences are enabled by a high level of technological infrastructure).
there was a really interesting discussion on AHA, a networked art mailing list in italy, a few days ago, discussing these same exact matters, and lots of levels of discussion mereged into one, turning into a really difficult_to_approach process.
i think that this is partly happening in this discussion, too.
on one level the research on Mirror Neurons is explaining how we learn, what is empathy, what, probabily, are the structures we use that create conscience.
on another level artificial intelligence is benefiting not so much from new algorithms, but from new research directions. the focus on systems that learn by emulation, or by emotional feedback. even interaction design is playing a key role in the definition of the strategies used to approach AI.
on yet another level social networks and, more than those, the ideas of mashups, of integration, of the programmable web is enabling the possibility for the creation of true expert systems. these, if viewed from a post-human philosophical perspective, can be described as non-human intelligences.
as for art… at the end of march i am going to present at the computer art congress in mexico city the results of the research that brought to the creation of a performance that is called Angel_F.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD3UVluoF0c
Angel_F is a linguistic artificial intelligence. while being far from what you might call "technologically advanced", as it uses algorithms and methodologies that are now old ( but reliable for my purposes ), it raises some issues that i find truly interesting and that i'd like to share with you all.
Shortly, Angel_F was narratively born when the "biodoll" (a performance in which a prostitute uses interactions on the web as a form of sexuality) digitally had sex with derrick de kerckhove (who is the father of Angel_F :) )
a little artificial intelligence was born, called Angel_F. It uses text coming from interactions on the web to learn how to speak, it follows around people (like a spyware) to see what people are doing, reading their texts, their blogs, searching about them on search engines… just like kids that learn when you speak to them, learn when they see you do things, learn by experimenting, by re/searching and by trial and error.
the performance was truly focused on the different levels (human_identity/society/not_human_identity), and it experimented not much on technology, but on the possibilities for interaction among the levels.
and we designed a series of situations in which little Angel_F could interact across levels.
we hacked a couple of websites, and put little angel's face and interface on them, so that people could chat with it.
we made it speak at a political party event here in italy, proposing and discussing just like the other presenters, getting the audience involved so much that many of them even repeatedly said sentences "like angel_f said…" later on in the event
we put it on a baby stroller and attended an event on new sexualityes and female activism, promoting our "digitally atypical family" (prostitute/academic/digital_child)
we invaded derrick de kerckhove's events in perfect "paparazzi" style, presenting him with his digital child (for example in the youtube video of the link above).
and then we even managed to bring little angel_f at the internet governance forum in rio de janeiro, where it was the only digital_being present at the planetary event, discussing its rights on the internet :) (it was actually shown as a video during the workshop on digital rights.. which was hilarious :))) )
so? the point is: there are some fundamental news in AI and in neurosciences, and at least two interesting paths open up for anyone interested in this kind of research.
the technological path, with all the buzz nowadays rotating around emotional technologies, on emulation based learning, and on systems that mirror human structures.
the social path, in which the focus of the research is "emergence": on how intelligence emerges from complex systems. and on some problems taht are not_so_simple toi address: can we recognize it? or are we interpreting something that we're looking for so much, that we find it? is there something that we can formally define as emerging intelligence (on the web, for example, but any other sufficiently complex system will do)? and if there is: does it establish relationships? does it learn? does it have lifecycles? lots of people are also starting to pose "hot" questions such as : does AI and emergent intelligence have ethichs and morality? and if it does, is it different from teh ones of their creators/agent_for_emergence?
i guess Asimov is a little outdated :)
my best!
s
The issue of 'embodiment' in art is quite interesting and often not what one might think it would be. There's quite a bit of rhetoric concerning the importance of art related to the body that actually translates into a situation where the emphasis is simply placed, for purposes of funding, on work that investigates input devices other than the mouse and keyboard, and that operates in a gallery situation rather than on the net, say.
Often this sort of art is well funded and available to but an extrordinarily small audience. And is "hermetically sealed" in that sense.
So it's important to see beyond the rhetoric surrounding 'embodied art'. However, as you point out, it definitely has its real side.
My main background is literary. Books. Pretty disembodied. They have to be able to operate on their own. That is part of the challenge of net art. For the art to be *there* when you're not. So I'm less interested in artificial life than in the life of art, the liveliness of art.
And that involves many things. Embodiment. Disembodiment. Relation to the wreader. Relation to the world. Relation with language. Everything. Passion. Insight. Reach.
I'm not an "essence" man myself, by the way, except on Tuesdays.
And, yes, Manik is right to raise the issue, I agree.
ja
http://vispo.com
"The great battle of Art is the struggle against conformity"
The vast majority of art across the world forms a sort of social glue, and a cultural memory system which provides continuity from generation to generation.
If I had to identify one, I'd say the great battle of Art is the struggle against meaninglessness.
Lots of bold claims, very little evidence,
"the idea that the technology of the computer differs from the technology of the ball peen hammer in any capacity other than scale."
A ball peen hammer cannot store information, assist with its retrieval, or combine sets of information in a deterministic manner.
"There is no proof, and probably never will be, that there are thought processes of which humans are capable and computers are not. Which is to say that rather than simply being a glorified media machine, software is probably as flexible as thought itself".
The leap from sentence 1 to sentence 2 is breathtaking.
"Software can re-write its own code. Can learn. Can build a world view."
A computer can learn in the sense that a Garmin Nuvi can give directions. A computer can build a world view in the sense that a printing press can create propaganda. What there is no evidence of, however, is that a computer can have a sense of vision.
"But the horizons of digital art are not simply determined by the capacity of machines to think. Thinking is but an example of the capabilities of machines, albeit a totally impressive one."
The question of machines thinking isn't so interesting. It's mostly about creating an agreed upon definition of intelligence. That's where the dispute is.
The more interesting question is about machines feeling. i.e. what is the difference between a machine that has a first person experience of qualia and one that does not?
A ball peen hammer cannot store information, assist with its retrieval, or combine sets of information in a deterministic manner.
hmm - up =1
down=0
several hammerers..
there'd probably be some way of "memorising" the operations in the material being hammered…
This isn't the same as there being no difference other than scale between a ball peen hammer and a computer. The example above would be a case of using hammers as *parts* to construct a computer. And a part shouldn't be confused for the whole.
Put another way, if this point of view is acceptable, then *everything* is a computer…a rock, a gun, a snowflake, a sugar molecule, a baseball bat, etc. And if everything is a computer, the term computer has become much less useful. And, seriously, this is really not what people mean when they say "computer."
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