Banky’s The Drinker stolen, kinappers demand £5000, Bansky offers £2.
Present: Spiro, Kate, Michael, Patrick, Jeremi, Jon.
1. Computer Lib / Dream Machines by Ted Nelson, 1974.
Hoarding: We all felt the notion of professional “Hoarding” was still a resonant idea – people continue to make ideas difficult / hard so that they cannot be penetrated by lay outsiders. This practice still seems endemic on both sides of the fence.
Several of us were interested in technologically induced memory loss: Computer “history” is not preserved. Computer data and programs die a short while after they are created. Our new media is impermanent. This may come up again in a future meeting.
We had a lot of debate about that power of computer virtual reality as an experience. This brought up the idea of the Valley of the Uncanny: When something becomes too perfect it becomes “uncanny” and loses some of its power over us – we instead become critical of it, more disinterested. Imperfection still holds power over us,
In this respect, Gene Youngblood is a person to read – he talks about Expanded Cinema in a book with an introduction by Buckminster Fuller. His ideas fit in with some of Marshal Mcluhan’s notions of the ramifications of new media.
2. The Temporary Autonomous Zone by Hakim Bey, 1990.
Hakim Bey’s real name is Peter Lambourne Wilson, and Spiro has met him several times. Spiro added some great insights about what Peter’s motivations were for writing TAZ.
Banky’s
The Drinker stolen, kinappers demand £5000, Bansky offers £2.
The idea of autonomy is not graspable: as soon as you think you have a firm hold on it slips away. As a stragegy for visual art it is hard, therefore, it is hard because it requires you to give up on the spectacle, to become invisible.
Chris Burden, for example, used to do TAZ-like works, e.g. having someone shoot him and video taping the event, but not for mass spectacle. Now these pieces have been mainstreamed and no longer have that sense of being TAZ.