On 1/11/08, douglas edric stanley <destanley_at_mac.com> wrote:
> >Which made me cringe the moment
> >i said it, but anyway, what I meant was - art is always a
> >representation.
>
> There are representations in art, but art is not
> always a representation. Absolutely not.
But what i *MEAN* isn't always what *IS*.
I did try to be provocative here.
> Similarly, there are representations inside
> computing, for example how you construct your
> data model, or how you arrange your inputs. But
> there are very real effects taking place inside
> of computers, I hope we can all agree on that
sure. electrical, magnetic, optical, temperatural, air flow etc effects.
to some of these effects we assign meanings, while others just are.
> one. For example, there are very real political
> struggles taking place via computing: power,
> social relations, money exchange, expressions of
> all sorts, etc.
all these are parts of social reality. they exist because we believe
they exist and we agree on some details of their represenations and on
some of their properties.
nevertheless they don't exist "inside of computers", althouh in the
modern world computers form an important part of the substrat of
social reality - but it is exactly due to their ability to represent!
taking one of John Searl's favorite examples - money, a hundreed euro
bill is money because people agree it is money. Without this agreement
it has all the properties of the paper with an image on it, but you
need people using it to buy stuff for it to acquire properties of
money. And you can do that because the paper with signs on it can
represent 100 euro. The buying properties of the bill aren't "inside"
the bill - they exist in the social reality, "inside" society that
declares and agrees on its properties. The ability of us to use this
physical token to represent money sort of binds together physical and
social realities.
Now when we say this bank has this much money, but most of it isn't in
paper and coins but in computer, it isn't the money that's in
computers, but something in computers represent the financial
properties of some sum of money, something in computer represents
operations on money etc. The money itself doesn't have to physically
exist anywhere as long as it is represented.
> And there any many other
> phenomena taking place inside of computers:
> calculation, simulation, recursion, etc.
Very similar to social reality, the mathematical and logical
abstractions don't exist inside computers, but are represented in
them.
> Even the tree in your example has
> representational aspects. So be careful not to
> conflate "art" with "representation".
Remember: I was talking to a three year old.
If I want to teach him the law of gravity I'm putting it like this:
"If you're not careful on the stairs you may fall and hurt yourself".
If I want to teach him the essense of art I start with some falsehoods
that hold true in particular cases he's most familiar with and refine
it as he grows - just like in schools we first study Newton's view on
gravity and later einsteinian.
--
cheers,
artm
http://lab.v2.nl/
Received on Fri Jan 11 2008 - 10:37:26 GMT