x-post from Carcinisation In a recent paper, my collaborator Tom Rutten and I advanced a tentative theory of how contemporary visual artworks might interact with a predictive error minimization (or "predictive processing") system in human viewers. The predictive processing model of cognition is a relatively recent figuration of the age-old problem of inference (how humans… Continue reading Wait, what? Sense-breaking in contemporary art
Category: Blog
Wasting Our Time
Karen Horney’s (pron. “Horn-eye”) Neurosis and Human Growth is an influential but heterodox work of psychoanalytic theory that argues on behalf of self-realization (her coinage). It’s a good book that would’ve been a great essay, so I want to compress its framework of ideas here and sort what felt resonant from what didn't. Here’s the… Continue reading Wasting Our Time
Superstates
I don't buy the intentionalist tone here, though I can imagine there being a natural attraction toward, and desire for, control emanating from the State which slowly leads us to the same place. Anyway, what I think's important about this passage is that it illuminates the way the local cultures of a relationship, of a… Continue reading Superstates
Lionhearted
I just read / Something John Perry Barlow / Wrote. He used to write lyrics / For the Grateful Dead. His work / With the Electronic Frontier / Foundation and former career / As a cattle rancher make him into / An intriguing kind of statesman.What I read was a eulogy for the womanHe loved… Continue reading Lionhearted
Junkspace
OtherInter.net, a small consulting group co-run by my friend Toby Shorin, has started up a series of workshops with folks from the community. Drew Austin of Kneeling Bus is teaching a course called the Digital Transformation of Physical Space, which I'll be enrolled in over the the next four weeks. I'll be keeping track of… Continue reading Junkspace
Tossouts from The Color Purple
As I wrap up editing the follow-up volume to 2017's La Vento, I wanted to preserve some of the quotes and lines and ideas that won't make it into final cut. Simon Reynolds, Shock & Awe The impossible perfection of a Moment or an Image—it could be a lover, or the tableau of the in-crowd… Continue reading Tossouts from The Color Purple
Sexual… Narcissism?
One end of sexual desire’s many spectrums is self-reflexivity, a desire not for the other but for the other’s desire. That is to say, desire indirectly for the self. Culturally this manifestation of sexuality is associated more with women than men. I’ll refrain from commenting on how gendered or inherent this kind of desire is, and… Continue reading Sexual… Narcissism?
Flowers in a Pop(ul)ist Paradigm
Spilled Reality, “One more on The 1975?”: The 1975 bloomed late in pop critics’ multi-decade questioning of masculine-rockist values like authenticity and edginess. In the new pop(ul)ist paradigm, entertainment value and its near heuristic, melodic propulsion, are strong arguments for aesthetic quality in themselves. Authenticity is redefined, less a matter of sheer aesthetic originality (anxiety… Continue reading Flowers in a Pop(ul)ist Paradigm
Teenage v. Depressive Ontology
Taken from Ghosts of My Life by Mark Fisher, esp. “No Longer the Pleasures: Joy Division,” and “K-Punk, or the Glampunk Art Pop Discontinuum.” On Teenage Ontology: Romanticism is the dressing-up of Teenage Ontology as an aesthetic cosmology. Teenage Ontology is governed by the conviction that what really matters is interiority: how you feel inside, and what… Continue reading Teenage v. Depressive Ontology
Against Expression
In his introduction to The Ubuweb Anthology of Conceptual Writing, Craig Dworkin positions conceptual writing in opposition to romantic expression, to writing that conveys “the emotional truth of the self.” But he replaces it with a vision of writing that's true to its linguistic self, writing that can't be conceived of as taking any other form. What… Continue reading Against Expression
