TBook

In a broad historical and cultural view, copyright is a recent and by no means universal concept. Copyright laws originated in Western society in the Eighteenth century. During the Renaissance, printers throughout Europe would reprint popular books without obtaining permissions or paying royalties and copyright was created as a way to regulate the printing industry. With the emergence of the concept of artistic genius, copyright became enmeshed with the general cultural understanding of authorship. Later, with globalized capitalism, control over copyrighted works became centered in the hands of media corporations instead of authors and artists. Even as the internet and digital media rendered distinctions between original and copies largely obsolete, changes in the law tried to artificially maintain them. As a result, copyright laws over time have been transformed from their original purpose of regulating the publishing industry to instead regulating its customers, artists and audiences.
From Guide to open content licenses, Lawrence Liang, Piet Zwart Institute.
Download guide here

Interesting to see, according to Florian Cramer, why games are forbidden by religion:

The game by contast is a central model of 20th century computation, both in the arts and in technology. The main ontological difference between theosophic and game computing is that games can do without a reference to higher powers—which is why religions declared many games, dice and card games for example, sinful—and may impose arbitrary restrictions that do not logically follow from a higher natural order. A game, in other words, can be its own autonomous, self-contained world.
Words made Flesh, Florian Cramer, p57

Games as God Killers. That’s a pretty nice idea.

Swift, in Gullivers travels, describe a word combinatory machine as such:

Everyone knew how laborious the usual method is of attaining to arts and sciences; whereas by his contrivance the most ignorant person at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labor, may write books in philosophy, poetry, politics, law, mathematics, and theology, without the least assistance from genius or study.

Leaving all knowledge text production to a words-combinatory machine, the people from the academic island of Lagado accomplish finally what can be seen as a total poetic life, based on interpretation of “reading signs”. Can we see here an link with XXth century “Art as Life” concept, such as Joseph Beuys?

Interpretation: Divination-like text, where “unintentional poetry” and strange relations between words force the interpretation of the reader, can be automaticaly generated by a software. We are fundamentaly “interpreting machines”. Historicaly, we can suspect that sacred text, as the bible for example, had kind of parasite “langage meaning” due to multi redaction and multi translations (from hebrew to greek, greek to latin, latin to vernacular) even if human translators where hight intellectuals, and tools as “multi language bibles” () where developped. (Figure out that Hebrew has no vowel! Pnk: Punk or Panik?).

The Oracle-like discourse. The interpretation of an obscure sentence, is supposed to give an “answer” to a specific question. The pythie was the most important Oracle person in Antic Greek. Her obscure quotes were clues given by gods to human. It seems she was in a trance caused by sulfuric vapors. Nice parallel with practices of Burroughs (again) where drugs played an important role in writing practice, combined with the fact that some readers (interpreters) found the book forecasting –with eerie prescience–such later phenomena as AIDS, liposuction and the crack epidemic.

The sudden appearence of mystic through interpretative reading reveals the need of meaning and the magic of words. Dada tried to break, with a very romantic approach, this mysticality through cynicism, with cut up technics as well, more game like… Destroying as well the idea of the Genius, and the idea of meaning:

Tristan Tzara’s advised To Make a Dadaist Poem as follows:
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want
to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

As a matter of READING, the sentence given by the pythie to Socrates triggered his philosophical research.

“According to the version of his defense speech presented in Plato’s Apology, Socrates’ life as the “gadfly” of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded negatively. Socrates, interpreting this as a riddle, set out to find men who were wiser than he was. He questioned the men of Athens about their knowledge of good, beauty, and virtue. Finding that they knew nothing and yet believing themselves to know much, Socrates came to the conclusion that he was wise only in so far as he knew that he knew nothing. Among the others, only the artisans came close to having true knowledge of their trade; the remainder of men made false claims to knowledge.”
“The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine his own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, “I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates

Enthusiasm etymology comes from Greek meaning “God in us”. It was the surnatural inspiration pushing the Greek priest to give the oracle. Plato, relator of Socrates life, used it as a fundamental element to define the poet.

This is some thoughts in order to modulate quotes such as Poetry is lost in translation.

http://www.mudam.lu/

www.mudam.lu est une création de Claude Closky, un espace ludique destiné à donner des informations sur le musée, à produire un magazine critique, à abriter une galerie d’œuvres digitales, et à interroger en le détournant l’usage d’Internet.

www.mudam.lu is a creation of Claude Closky, a ludic space intended to give information on the museum, to produce a critical magazine, to shelter a gallery of digital works, and to question by diverting the use of Internet (hey, google translator is not that poetic today)

Mundam is the future museum of contemporary art in Luxemburg.

www.sittes.net is Clowski’s website.

– – – – – – – –

Extract of an interview of CC:

PP : Vous affectionnez particulièrement le mode de l’énumération. Quel vide cherchez-vous donc à combler ?

CC : L’énumération, la classification, l’accumulation ne sont-elles pas plutôt l’expression du vide dont vous parlez ? Toujours est-il que notre quotidien se réduit souvent à répéter les gestes que l’on a fait la veille et que notre environnement se remplit inexorablement d’objets que l’on classe et range dans des boîtes, sur des étagères, dans des dossiers informatiques, etc. En énumérant certains d’entre eux, je parle de ce qui motive en partie mon existence, et probablement celle de la plupart d’entre nous.

(Propos recueillis par Philippe Piguet pour L’Evénement du Jeudi, publié le 21 février 2000.)

– – – – – – – –

Claude Closky, Untitled (NAQDAQ), 2003, wallpaper.

Claude Closky, Untitled (Supermarket), 1996-1999, wallpaper, silkscreen print.

The excepto of shoes of the queen

The “excepto of shoes of the queen” that it it door preserves the queen.
The regiment which it is sold and cum the belief it sleeps.
They with him ess of hayss of manufacture of moron in a thing.
Be latent bomb of H.
It preserves the queen whom it carries.
Is not the human existence to be.
It does not have a future.
It dreams of nyu that it is a writing, you inside.
By you wants what does not speak it.
It does not speak what you do in the need.
It will be wide a future and a future, respecting the future where it does not have.
It preserves the queen whom it carries.
We it want to say the male.
We love our queens.
The stage which it door transports.
It preserves the queen whom it carries.
Since the tourist is the money.
So that it is obvious.
He preserves the history which Ohio carries.
It stop which it door preserves the person who becomes insane.
Below five be with the sea of Deus there is a grace.
All the crimes are granted.
By having this future of it.
There is a possibility it having a sin and when we are the flower inside the dustbin.
We are the poison it to exist human inside to be of machine.
We future, by us configuration of America are you who are.
It preserves the queen whom it carries.
We it want to say the male.
We love our queens.
It carried, it of preserves.
It preserves the queen whom it carries.
We it want to say the male.
With the E there is not a future.
It dreams of nyu that it is a writing,
you – future and future, it interior will be extended, respecting the future.
Future and future, in me for the future.
Future and future, it will be extended, respecting the future.
Future, it will be extended, respecting the future.

Continue reading »

Stuart Bailey, talking about a recent worksop at USC, california. Using Georges Perec’s system of the Exercice de style, where the same action is described in 99 different writing styles, Bailey interessantly evokes this practice into Graphic design language:

“The implication of this in terms of graphic design is that any piece of work could be designed in (at least) 99 different ways, using a graphic vocabulary rather than a textual one (or, obviously, both). I’m interested in learning, or teaching, how to be able to recognize and use those different styles in a manner appropriate to each new piece of work, starting from zero every time. That’s exactly what graphic design and modernism mean to me. The sort of work I like and aspire to make is based on this pluralism, intelligently drawing from the whole spectrum of style rather than sticking to one slavishly.”

Interview of Stuart Bailey in “Speak Up”

A little summary of the walks done in the field of books, during past 2 month

Book is in mutation. What it shows is a different apprehension and use of language and codes. Books are no more the only one media support, but has its own specificity. Dematerialisation, new ‘seeing’ practice, technical progress, new beauty coming from Modern Art changed its definition. “Books” is not taken as the “whole” in itself.

This symbolic “whole” has been moved in the intangibility of the internet maze. The conception of knowledge is no more “adding” but “evoluting”. Knowledge, thanks concept of progress, set us in a permanent past situation. (Idea so strong that we buy technical devices knowing it’s already outdated (Macintosh marketing). 1 year ago, Alzeimer was due to alloy, today no more, but smoking a cigarette a day helps avoiding the desease.)

Progress depending on science, and roots of science depending on logic, what can the book has to say about that? If it has been a support for this logic (Descarte) via rethoric, it has been as well the succesfull reverse: poetry, and a materialisation of feelings…

Book can be seen as an obsolete support, but it is, as many human creation (architecture) a mirror reflecting and polarising the image of the society. It is today among others between full quadri christmas present, thrown away usersmanual or science theory, cheap temporary aesthetic support…

Its strengh comes from its specific narrativity, even restrained by shapes printed on a succession of flat support, it has endless possibilities to tell a story, true or false. Book is a lense on the world. It’s sure the written, the shaped, the ordonated, but it’s above all the READING. It’s a pro-active support. It’s an active link between individuals.

If poetry is simply understood as the very manifestation of human imagination, the substance which all creative acts derive from, can the specificity of the book a demonstration of the independance of the individual in front of the moving knowledge, defined as relative and precise… The distance between unresponsible forces (that used to be nature once) and the living will of the self?

Can the book playing the devil of the so-called progress? Is there other ways of reading codes and protocoles? Is it in the hardcore of software codes, in the deshumanised juridiction law and order, in the totalitarian business and advertising sloganism language that (a) poetry hides? Codes and procedures, that are today’s most used tools in everyday life (computer, laws), and are shaping books (software, typography), are producing it’s meaning? What role can the book play in the process of general NORMALISATION of our world?

A little reminder about legal ownerships and public domain:

For music, rights become public domain:
– 75 years after creators death.
– 50 years after interpreter death.

For books, a text becomes public domain
– 70 years after writters death.
– 70 years after the book/text is published.

But in 1998, the legal term have been prolongated by the american Supreme Court, to 95 years, after heavy lobbying from Walt Disney Company. Mickey Mouse is protected untill 2023.

To be continued.

Interview with a Photocopier (Matthew Fuller)

Interviews of Robert Stein and Peggy Awhesh using game network!
www.thisspartanlife.com

Ex. from the editorial of
Electric Newspaper, issue 2.
Psychic TV

“So, in caseI.T. is unclear. Any and all of the audio files, loops, or even longer trance sections on this CD, are FREE to whoever wishes to utilise them. We, Ourselves, have all ways sampled, cannibalised, and reworked our own documentary recordings and master tapes. Incestuous thievery, a delicate decadence. We believe that the omnipresence of sampling nand cut-up technologies will probably be seen as one of the most significant tooling developments for Cultural Engineering. For the first TIME in Astory everysound ever recorded in any medium is potentially available to anyone to be used, twisrted, mutilated, enhanced, driven through it’s own perceptual perceptual envelope and turned into whatever dream takes our fancy, only to be processed, sampled, looped and mutated into something else by another.”
…
“The most basic survival tool, and terrorist weapon we might have, is the principle of “Cutting-Up” through which, a symbiotic relationship with the language of synchronicity can be established. “When in doubt, cut it up.” as Burroughs said in 1956, “…to see what’s really there.” Sample it, rebuild it.”

Thee Memium IS thee Mass Edge Brother Genesis