At 01:16 PM 8/9/98 +1100, Avatar wrote:
>It is highly likely that the driven formal aesthetic of these
>different sub-cultures and communities will express itself in new forms
>of complex and developed art, which, since their birth in salons and
>bohemia, have struggled to exist within a culture of mass production,
>distribution monopolies and limited cybernetics. The more formal
>artistic avant-garde will also become more expressive, though at a
>slightly later date, since it is politically tied to the current
>socio-economic system for the period while work remains existant in its
>current form. What are some of the forces driving these forthcoming
>changes?
I agree with the examples as listed below:
>New materials.
>Controlled materials.
>Accessible, low-cost and non-hierachial infrastructures.
>Artist-controlled distribution networks.
>A new abundance of ability.
>A new abundance of leisure.
>Increased information and congruence of information.
>Increased control of the body.
>Increased control of an increasingly interactive environment.
>Increased control of neurological consciousness and variation of its
>structure.
I'd add interested in:
extreme life extension
migration into space
advent of synthetic realities
sub-personalities and secondary bodies
sensory mixes and augmentations
>Already, it is difficult to follow the many possibilities being opened
>up in biology, nanotechnology and computing. These range from tens of
>molecular supercomputers inside individual cells to using radiotelescope
>networks as a sensory organ to watch the stars directly. Advanced
>automation and nanotechnology (which involves consciously constructed
>atomic and molecular arrangements and materials containing extremely
>large numbers of molecular supercomputers linked to assemblers and
>disassemblers), followed later by artificial or consciously constructed
>intelligence, will result in the end of required manual work and the
>disappearance of capital (as self-replication of automated production
>systems does not require organized manual labour driven by provision of
>goods and services as reward). Any sentient being will potentially be
>capable of choosing to control its level of intelligence and its
>component systems, including choice of lifespan. For example, crossovers
>between DNA computers and nanotechnology could result in the exchange of
>complex information through the saliva of a kiss.
>
>PRACTICAL EXAMPLES
>
>"Billboard"
>Use of nanopaper or screenpaint to coat billboards distributed above
>artist warehouses and displaying downloads of art, whether video or
>painterly. For example, 30-second interval displays of the performance
>artist during a 24-hour period. The same principle can apply to
>wallscreens, roomscreens, materials coating (for example, coating of
>cars), clothes, 'poster' pillars, "outside galleries" (galleries with
>exterior display) and simultaneous galleries (galleries with identical
>rotating and simultaneous displays at a variety of sites around the
>world). Institutions such as artbanks will cater for such needs.
This is an idea I have been thinking about for quite some time, especially after my most recent visit to Las Vegas where the billboards vibrate with brilliant colors and images. I would like to take my animation performance piece "The Aesthetics of Memetic Evolution" and put it up billboard size.
>"Nanopainting"
>Use of nanomaterials to provide 3-dimensional simulation of brushstrokes
>and painterly effects, capable of modifying themselves.
>"King Kong"
>You inhabit a virtual body six storeys high, venturing down a virtual
>Brunswick Street to lift cars and pick the tops off buildings. Point of
>eyesight view, however, comes not from your virtual eyes but a rotating
>panorama. As your journey begins you start to shrink….
>"Spireshadow"
>Modelling their work on the famous 1960s computer simulation, a group of
>sculptures create a short-term sculptural spire of immense height that
>casts its shadow on the precise day the precise distance across
>Melbourne to reach the border house from the shoreline. Impossible? No.
>
>"MCG edit"
>100,000 automated cameras track players and viewpoints, including
>personal choice shots, and store all visual data of the Grand Final.
>Viewers create their own 'director's cut' and compare notes while
>imbiding vegetarian VB (VB without filtration through animal products).
>
>"Nano suitmask"
>Gymnastics unheard of in the past are possible with diamond-muscle
>sheathing controlled by millions of molecular supercomputers.
>Patterning and shifting of skin and mask enable artistic expression of
>the Circus Oz version of the Tempest atop four adjacent city rooftops,
>with appropriate leaping and tumbling.
>
>"Flower bed"
>Your bed and bedroom are augmented by genetically sculptured flowers,
>which form the ceiling and open to the morning Sun while selected
>psychedelic neurotransmitters are wafted your way, according to your
>mood.
>
>"Fogset"
>Nanotech utility fogs lift the players up and surround their bodies.
>Like vampiric hosts, they float in the material as the Earth turns,
>hiding the Sun, while playing high-speed three-dimensional metachess and
>composing haiku. Afterwards they gather and discuss the game, vying to
>ensure that the best players are ensured the honour of victory.
>
>"Villa of the Mysteries"
>Virtual and overt realities merge in this historic reenactment of the
>ancient rites, modelled on Pompeii. Participants swap visual, aural and
>tactile sensory inputs, experiencing the mixed realities from a variety
>of perspectives, the shifting patterns modelled on the lava flows of
>yesteryear.
>
>"Migration of the Spider Homes"
>Modifiable houses with hydraulically controlled beds shift on hydraulic
>spider legs, foretelling the era of smart houses and thinking cities.
>Not content with shifting from beach to forest, they echo the call of
>James Blish in "Cities in Flight" by going solar.
>
>"Twintown"
>A single male body to double female body transformation (consensual and
>without neurological override) is ritually enacted, and completed by
>Tantric branding. The parameters of the new bodies are decided by vote
>of assembled friends and close relatives, after consultation with the
>wish-drive of the person concerned.
>
>"Beehive Extravaganze: splitting universe"
>Superintelligent self-modified bees are requested to provide their views
>on a potential universe design. No longer the province of physicists and
>mathematicians, systems design on this scale has broadened to include
>more poetic progenitators.
>
>"Cyber mandala"
>Socio-historical analyses of memetic constructs over the past 2,500
>years are reassembled as cyber mandalas on Simnet (which contains
>non-aware virtual versions of past personages) for meditative purposes.
>
>"Sunsurf"
>Flocks of special-material solar sails are infused with the
>consciousness of visitors and skim the colder surface of the Sun, their
>pleasure centres linked to the erupting solar winds and sunspots.
>
>This projected breakdown of art as a commodity in the face of
>multivalency will seem implausible to some, and wildly improbable to
>others, but flows naturally from the increased range of choice about to
>race over us. Far more freeform art than the examples quoted above will
>surface and interact at many different levels. Mythologies and lives may
>well be the new materials, for many. Ascending and descending constructs
>within oceans of consciousness are the probable result of our impending
>exit from the womb of history into the realm of hypersentiency and
>self-directed evolution. From this perspective, Cabaret Voltaire and
>Andy Warhol will seem to be precursors to and prophets of the dawn of a
>new age. Nation states and corporations may well become the romantic,
>semi-tragic dream-phrases of 20th century improbabilities, used for
>constructive design purposes and exploration rather than as the spine
>and skeleton of our everyday reality.
>
Natasha Vita More [fka Nancie Clark]: www.natasha.cc
Transhumanist Art Centre - Home of Extropic Art: www.extropic-art.com
**NEW** Transhuman Culture InfoMark: www.transhuman.org
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"The best defense is an aesthetic offense."