theory » meanderings

TaoTeChing.org

Who recognizes his limitations is healthy;
Who ignores his limitations is sick.
The sage recognizes this sickness as a limitation.
And so becomes immune.

Agnes Martin (1997)

“I don’t have any ideas myself; I have a vacant mind, in order to do exactly what the inspiration calls for… Art is responded to with emotion… art is not intellectual at all. … I guess I am rather extreme. I think we don’t deserve any credit. The inspiration comes to me and tells me exactly what to do… I gave up all of theory… so that leaves me with a clear mind. … An empty mind, so when something comes into it, you can see it… “

Bill Viola

“Digital computers and software technologies are holistic; they think in terms of whole structures.”

Video 80(5):36-41. 1982. Bill Viola, Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, pg. 101. Editor. Robert Violette. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995.

Matthias Hillner \ virtual typography

Virtuosity

Communication #1: Computers, Slavery and Making Art

Jean Piché: “…virtuosity. Not as in pyrotechnics but as in transcendence. The ultimate, and for me desirable, absence of technical reference.” (1997)

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror – Sam Harris

online book

Fritjof Capra

Fritjof Capra – website

REFRESH!

Benzon: First Person: Neuro-Cognitive Notes on the Self in Life and in Fiction .

“I devote the single largest section of this essay to a detailed account of how a nervous system implements personal pronouns.”

EDA :: UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts

Event Archive

Friends of Orbit Bright – a racistly-white parody site promoting chewing gum and chastity (sex!). Painfully obvious perpetual brand placements. It’s aimed at (post-)tweeners who believe in god but want to get laid.

Outlook Theatre – a car made glamorous through association with video vignettes of a perfect family and immaculate romantic moments. Light fluffy and efficient consumer waltz. It’s aimed at the wife archetype who wishes she could drive away.

UFC66 – an Ultra fighting championship labyrinth full of snarling warriors and big time money. It’s aimed at soldiers, the dispossessed and anyone who needs to fight just to survive. The myth of a champion is needed only by the defeated and oppressed.

Philippe Bootz – Alire: A Relentless Literary Investigation

“The web-based literary journal Alire was created in January 1989 by the Parisian groupL.A.I.R.E. (Lecture, Art, Innovation, Recherche, Écriture) -which included Philippe Bootz, Frédéric Develay, Jean-Marie Dutey, Claude Maillard and Tibor Papp. Alire is known as the oldest multimedia journal in Europe, and certainly one of the oldest in the West. Before the arrival of CD-ROMs, before the Internet explosion, the journal was already publishing poetry written for and intended to be read through computers.”

Mag.net reader | Experiences in Electronic Cultural Publishing

Electronic Poetics

“Reading’s task: to reentangle, rather than decipher; you don’t decipher a labyrinth.”

Open Letter Home Page

“…a journal of critical and theoretical discussions of poetics and Canadian culture, written primarily by Canadian writers and artists.”

Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins

“Popular culture is defined in part by its immediacy and it is not clear that one can meaningfully understand how it works or what it does without stepping at least temporarily into the realm of the proximate and the passionate.” April 16, 2007, http://www.henryjenkins.org/