BIO
Rob Myers is an artist and hacker based in the UK.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
I have been creating images of the contemporary social and cultural environment through programming, design software and visual remixing since the early 1990s. My work is influenced by popular culture and high art in equal measures. My interest in remixing and sampling has led to my involvement in the Free Culture movement. I have been involved in the public consultation regarding the Creative Commons 2.0 and CC-UK licenses. All my visual art is available under a Creative Commons license.
My interest in programming has led to my involvement with the Free Software movement. I developed the Macintosh version of the Gwydion Dylan programming language compiler. All my software is available under the GNU GPL.
WGBH Boston sandbox
It's NC, which is fail for a public institution, but better than the BBC which wrote its own NC license.
A Feast for Your Eyezz
newer work seems to be largely about running around and exploring those environments, then generating responses.
In a way that JODI's 404 wasn't? ;-)
In a way that JODI's 404 wasn't? ;-)
Pissed Off Artists Allegedly Urinate on Kruger Art
Cheap and about twenty five years late. Just as much music seems currently to be a pastiche of the worst cheese of the 1980s, so it would seem much artistic activity is
It's also sexist (why Kruger and not an equally deserving male artist?) and a bit pathetic (they could only reach the floor?).
Rather than feeding the oxygen of publicity to Kruger's picture post pastiche issue porn couldn't they just try Pissing In A River?
It's also sexist (why Kruger and not an equally deserving male artist?) and a bit pathetic (they could only reach the floor?).
Rather than feeding the oxygen of publicity to Kruger's picture post pastiche issue porn couldn't they just try Pissing In A River?
On being
ps. Perhaps you didn't notice that I was using the process ID. $$ is one of those quirky "special variables" in Perl. It returns the process ID so $exist = $$; contains the process ID.
Oops. Sorry. I have now learnt a new Perl built-in variable.
Oops. Sorry. I have now learnt a new Perl built-in variable.
On being
The history of the culture of AI is one of rigorous great failure. AI is a form of literature, the tragedic drama of the hacker class. Mez is indeed relevant here as the mirror image of AI, "Turings Man" ironized.
Can a program know whether it exists? It depends what we mean by "know". I have long argued that a problem with e.g. AARON is that computers don't care about the human body or human experience. A program would be interested (if it could be interested) in its own environment. The environment of memory and disk space, of process IDs and processor time.
If consciousness is an emergent property of more complex systems or requires spirit or whatever then it is nonsensical to try to produce a minimal program or any material(ist) system that embodies being. But it may function as as an evocative representation or as a metaphor.
Imagine a program that knows its own process ID (every running program in a system is given a unique number to identify it, this is the process ID), and will watch for the absence of that ID from the list of running processes. Now imagine the conditions under which the program could actually report the absence of its own process ID from the process list. Now imagine being present after your own death. Neither is possible in a materialist universe. So there is an analog there.
Psuedocode:
pid := getpid()
loop (contains (getAllPids(), pid))
..sleep (1)
end loop
print "I have died.
Bolter in "Turings Man" argued that computers are the "enabling technology" of contemporary culture, the defining metaphor of our age as clockwork and fire were for previous generations. Constructing a trivial program to represent/evoke/satirise/deliberately fail to capture the concept of being is like depicting the human figure using charcoal or ceramics or paint or steel or photography or CGI.
'Pataphysic or Meinongian ontology tend to make nonsense of being and existence. So does art. Badiou's ontology is materialist and atheist and yet is based on (mathematical) infinities. If we switch to Haskell we can treat being as lazily evaluated infinities and still fit them in a computer's memory. To fail to do so is more interesting as art than to succeed at many less ambitious tasks.
Can a program know whether it exists? It depends what we mean by "know". I have long argued that a problem with e.g. AARON is that computers don't care about the human body or human experience. A program would be interested (if it could be interested) in its own environment. The environment of memory and disk space, of process IDs and processor time.
If consciousness is an emergent property of more complex systems or requires spirit or whatever then it is nonsensical to try to produce a minimal program or any material(ist) system that embodies being. But it may function as as an evocative representation or as a metaphor.
Imagine a program that knows its own process ID (every running program in a system is given a unique number to identify it, this is the process ID), and will watch for the absence of that ID from the list of running processes. Now imagine the conditions under which the program could actually report the absence of its own process ID from the process list. Now imagine being present after your own death. Neither is possible in a materialist universe. So there is an analog there.
Psuedocode:
pid := getpid()
loop (contains (getAllPids(), pid))
..sleep (1)
end loop
print "I have died.
Bolter in "Turings Man" argued that computers are the "enabling technology" of contemporary culture, the defining metaphor of our age as clockwork and fire were for previous generations. Constructing a trivial program to represent/evoke/satirise/deliberately fail to capture the concept of being is like depicting the human figure using charcoal or ceramics or paint or steel or photography or CGI.
'Pataphysic or Meinongian ontology tend to make nonsense of being and existence. So does art. Badiou's ontology is materialist and atheist and yet is based on (mathematical) infinities. If we switch to Haskell we can treat being as lazily evaluated infinities and still fit them in a computer's memory. To fail to do so is more interesting as art than to succeed at many less ambitious tasks.
