From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 00:04:51 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 19:04:51 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <e3a34e0e0907020752r15ede72bw7166091ad8f5cabb@mail.gmail.com>
References: <c0ynMGal.1246487457.7488740.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907012003190.17691@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907011826i140f45cat89910869eab74508@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907020122110.4284@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907020752r15ede72bw7166091ad8f5cabb@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021859000.17959@panix3.panix.com>



Hi Pall, perhaps slightly misunderstanding - I'm aware of what you're 
saying at the end, and I wasn't think about machine feeling this or that, 
but about the psychoanalytics involved by the user/subject itself - in 
other words, the person who is reading the code, and it's here that the 
dirtiness - abjection - can appear. Code is just code; its apperception 
and/or phenomenology is something else entirely. To be really stupid (on 
my end) about it, reading, say, Leviticus or Celine or de Sade can make me 
really uncomfortable, even though it's 'just' language - but the 'just' 
leaks out, and might conceivably leak out in code. Otherwise you've got 
two different things going on - clear-style code, and reference to an 
unclear history, say, of cultural artifacts - but the reference is that of 
the proper name, not the uneasy content. So I agree, we're on about two 
different things here, and have different interests at the heart of 
things. Years ago I created a number of programs doing complex things, for 
example, with no output at all - I was interested in the 'barrier' for the 
user (bad name but it will do), the wall indicating something was going 
on, maybe a secret. And I was interested in what that 'felt' like for the 
user, not the code itself, which might or might not have been doing 
amazing things (depending on subroutines etc. etc.) - Alan


On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:

> Hi Alan,
> Thanks for the comments. I guess by "the essence" of the work, I'm
> considering the absolute minimum that it takes to bring to mind
> "Seedbed" when looking at the code. In that sense, I think this and
> "Sleep" are among the best Microcodes yet because it doesn't take an
> accomplished programmer to understand the relationship given the
> commands "touch $myself" and "sleep((8*60)*60)" featured prominently
> in otherwise sparse code.
>
> Regarding the body/psycological/"dis/comfort", these are interesting
> only because I'm dealing with entities that are entirely void and/or
> incapable of any of these. No matter what I make the machine do, it's
> never going to experience and psychological effects nor discomfort. I
> could attempt to create a script that disables the CPU fan and then
> compiles the linux kernel in an infinite loop, causing the computer to
> heat up and possibly even destroy the cpu (I don't know if this could
> actually be done) but the machine still wouldn't feel any "discomfort"
> because, despite sensors, it really doesn't "feel" anything and that
> is an import aspect of what I'm doing with, for instance, "Seedbed" in
> code.
>
> I do understand, to an extent, what you mean but I think we're simply
> approaching things from entirely different angles. I see the machine
> as nothing more than that. There is no body, no feeling, no sensation
> at all. If we attribute any of that to the machine then it's more
> about our own body, feelings, sensations than the machine's. This is
> what happens with "Seedbed" in code. If anyone looks at the code and
> thinks the work has anything to do with autoeroticism, then it's their
> own autoeroticism that is coming into play, not the machine's. There's
> nothing inherently erotic about the "touch" command and the "$myself"
> variable could be called anything at all and it wouldn't change the
> functionality of the program.
>
> best r.
> Pall
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good unix
>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well as
>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's that
>> barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me parallels
>> the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken down
>> psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated, or can't
>> it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which also
>> functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual body for
>> example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe it's in the
>> binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of clarity and it's hard
>> to see how dis/embodiment might function, even comfortably, this way. The
>> difference between code as medium (strict code) might be clearer than ways
>> of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code poorly, so in a way I don't
>> know what I'm talking about, and I admire what you're doing - I'm just
>> wondering about things like the body of code, the coded body, the decoded
>> body...
>>
>> - Alan
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Alan,
>>>
>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
>>>> missing
>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write them
>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was the
>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>> while(1){
>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>> }
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> james
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may see
>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human activities
>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>> artist
>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *****************************
>>> Pall Thayer
>>> artist
>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>> *****************************
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> *****************************
> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://www.this.is/pallit
> *****************************
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>



| Alan Sondheim Mail archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
| Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
| sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim

From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 00:16:16 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 19:16:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>



(Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with 
its sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then 
the burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's 
all content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it 
that way. In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So it's 
uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan

On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:

>
> i don't know perl, so this is c code...
>
> please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and sweaty...
> please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then down...
> until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
>
> my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and is
> chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you know,
> there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
> 'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
>
> there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
> step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
> but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
> and i'm getting confused.
>
> this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
> adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
> language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
>
>
>
>
> james.
> ----
>
>
> #include <stdio.h>
> #include <string.h>
> #include <stdlib.h>
>
> char* strorig=
> "I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
> I am going to come on your face and \
> I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
> I am so turned on by it and \
> I am masturbating furiously with your image \
> fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
> am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
> i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
>
> int main()
> {
>    srand(time());
>    float ramp=0;
>    float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
>    int w=0;
>    char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
>    strcpy(str,strorig);
>    char* ptr;
>    char* end=0;
>    int i=5000;
>    int next=0;
>    while(1){
>        ramp+=stz;
>        if(!end){
>            ptr=str;
>            end=strstr(ptr," ");
>            next=1;
>        }
>        if(stz>0){
>            if(ramp>60000.0f){
>                stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>                next=1;
>            }
>        }
>        else if (stz<0){
>            if(ramp<0){
>                stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>                next=1;
>            }
>        }
>        if(next){
>            *end=0;
>            printf("%s\n",ptr);
>            *end=' ';
>            ptr=end+1;
>            end=strstr(ptr," ");
>            next=0;
>        }
>    }
> }
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Hi Paul,
>>
>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good unix
>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well as
>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's
>> that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
>> parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken
>> down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated, or
>> can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which
>> also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual
>> body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe
>> it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of clarity
>> and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even comfortably,
>> this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might be
>> clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code poorly,
>> so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what you're
>> doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the coded
>> body, the decoded body...
>>
>> - Alan
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Alan,
>>>
>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're missing
>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write them
>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was the
>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>> while(1){
>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>> }
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> james
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may see
>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human activities
>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>> artist
>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *****************************
>>> Pall Thayer
>>> artist
>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>> *****************************
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>



| Alan Sondheim Mail archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
| Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
| sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim

From pallthay at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 00:54:04 2009
From: pallthay at gmail.com (Pall Thayer)
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 23:54:04 +0000
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Alan,
I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
mean and see the absurdity of it all.

best r.
Pall

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> (Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with its
> sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then the
> burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's all
> content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it that way.
> In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
> char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So it's
> uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan
>
> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>
>>
>> i don't know perl, so this is c code...
>>
>> please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and sweaty...
>> please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then down...
>> until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
>>
>> my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and is
>> chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you know,
>> there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
>> 'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
>>
>> there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
>> step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
>> but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
>> and i'm getting confused.
>>
>> this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
>> adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
>> language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> james.
>> ----
>>
>>
>> #include <stdio.h>
>> #include <string.h>
>> #include <stdlib.h>
>>
>> char* strorig=
>> "I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
>> I am going to come on your face and \
>> I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
>> I am so turned on by it and \
>> I am masturbating furiously with your image \
>> fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
>> am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
>> i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
>>
>> int main()
>> {
>> ? srand(time());
>> ? float ramp=0;
>> ? float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
>> ? int w=0;
>> ? char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
>> ? strcpy(str,strorig);
>> ? char* ptr;
>> ? char* end=0;
>> ? int i=5000;
>> ? int next=0;
>> ? while(1){
>> ? ? ? ramp+=stz;
>> ? ? ? if(!end){
>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=str;
>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>> ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>> ? ? ? }
>> ? ? ? if(stz>0){
>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp>60000.0f){
>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>> ? ? ? }
>> ? ? ? else if (stz<0){
>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp<0){
>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>> ? ? ? }
>> ? ? ? if(next){
>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=0;
>> ? ? ? ? ? printf("%s\n",ptr);
>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=' ';
>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=end+1;
>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>> ? ? ? ? ? next=0;
>> ? ? ? }
>> ? }
>> }
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Paul,
>>>
>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good
>>> unix
>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well as
>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's
>>> that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
>>> parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken
>>> down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated, or
>>> can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which
>>> also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual
>>> body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe
>>> it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of
>>> clarity
>>> and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even comfortably,
>>> this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might be
>>> clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code poorly,
>>> so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what you're
>>> doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the coded
>>> body, the decoded body...
>>>
>>> - Alan
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>
>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
>>>>> missing
>>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write
>>>>> them
>>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was
>>>>> the
>>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>>> while(1){
>>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> james
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may
>>>>>>> see
>>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human
>>>>>>> activities
>>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *****************************
>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>> artist
>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>> *****************************
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>>
>
>
>
> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>



-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************


From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 01:42:15 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 20:42:15 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>



What you call the absurdity is there even in the original; one doesn't see 
Acconci doing anything (there's documentation of course) - it's all within 
the register of the imaginary. It could even be considered a black box - 
but a piece which also implies the box's abject.

I don't think I'm 'simply' pointing out anything; as we both agreed, we're 
interested in different things - I'm following, say, Mary Douglas and 
Kristeva here in terms of issues of purity, danger, abjection, within-and- 
without the body, and you're concerned, I think, with the aesthetics of 
micro-codes, which may well imply a different form of reading. You're 
coding what was originally 'dirty' and I'm curious about the dirtiness of 
code. And that can go in all sorts of directions - towards the physical 
labor that went into code production and/or production of the technologies 
that allow the code to 'do something,' the potential abject within the 
code - that example of the fan or I think of nn's (Antiorp) protection of 
Nato 55 - or her style for that matter - not to mention the problems of 
potential wells, quantum tunneling, etc.

You say "But the interesting thing is that
> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
> interpretation of the code."

and I'm curious what sort of response the code elicits, what sort of 
response you want? (As far as I can tell, not programming) the code is 
beautiful, it has its own aesthetics and playfulness. Seedbed on the other 
hand was an odd sort of simultaneous assault and deflection that perhaps 
(any) code can't touch# at all?

- Alan

On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:

> Hi Alan,
> I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
> idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
> the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
> simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
> responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
> itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
> understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
> to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
> else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
> interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
> consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
> there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
> the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
> ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
> I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
> will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
> mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>
> best r.
> Pall
>
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> (Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with its
>> sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then the
>> burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's all
>> content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it that way.
>> In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
>> char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So it's
>> uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan
>>
>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> i don't know perl, so this is c code...
>>>
>>> please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and sweaty...
>>> please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then down...
>>> until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
>>>
>>> my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and is
>>> chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you know,
>>> there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
>>> 'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
>>>
>>> there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
>>> step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
>>> but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
>>> and i'm getting confused.
>>>
>>> this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
>>> adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
>>> language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> james.
>>> ----
>>>
>>>
>>> #include <stdio.h>
>>> #include <string.h>
>>> #include <stdlib.h>
>>>
>>> char* strorig=
>>> "I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
>>> I am going to come on your face and \
>>> I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
>>> I am so turned on by it and \
>>> I am masturbating furiously with your image \
>>> fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
>>> am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
>>> i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
>>>
>>> int main()
>>> {
>>> ? srand(time());
>>> ? float ramp=0;
>>> ? float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
>>> ? int w=0;
>>> ? char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
>>> ? strcpy(str,strorig);
>>> ? char* ptr;
>>> ? char* end=0;
>>> ? int i=5000;
>>> ? int next=0;
>>> ? while(1){
>>> ? ? ? ramp+=stz;
>>> ? ? ? if(!end){
>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=str;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>> ? ? ? }
>>> ? ? ? if(stz>0){
>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp>60000.0f){
>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>> ? ? ? }
>>> ? ? ? else if (stz<0){
>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp<0){
>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>> ? ? ? }
>>> ? ? ? if(next){
>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=0;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? printf("%s\n",ptr);
>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=' ';
>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=end+1;
>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=0;
>>> ? ? ? }
>>> ? }
>>> }
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>
>>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good
>>>> unix
>>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well as
>>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's
>>>> that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
>>>> parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken
>>>> down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated, or
>>>> can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which
>>>> also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual
>>>> body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe
>>>> it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of
>>>> clarity
>>>> and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even comfortably,
>>>> this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might be
>>>> clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code poorly,
>>>> so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what you're
>>>> doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the coded
>>>> body, the decoded body...
>>>>
>>>> - Alan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>>
>>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
>>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
>>>>>> missing
>>>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write
>>>>>> them
>>>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was
>>>>>> the
>>>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>>>> while(1){
>>>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> james
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may
>>>>>>>> see
>>>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human
>>>>>>>> activities
>>>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> *****************************
>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>> artist
>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> *****************************
> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://www.this.is/pallit
> *****************************
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>



| Alan Sondheim Mail archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
| Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
| sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim

From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 01:47:27 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 20:47:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] bringing an end to a flooding rain
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022047200.15891@panix3.panix.com>




bringing an end to a flooding rain


breathing through the yayli tanbur, you hear the storm, hear the storm
come to a temporary lull, traffic sounds continuing the ostinato, a siren
somewhat out of tune, end of the world murmurs, the rain picks up, yes yes
yes it was the rain all along

http://www.alansondheim.org/yt3.mp3

(yt2 removed, wasn't that good)

From pallthay at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 02:55:54 2009
From: pallthay at gmail.com (Pall Thayer)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 01:55:54 +0000
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <e3a34e0e0907021855j70ef5888t3e00f0b2a20bf7a0@mail.gmail.com>

OK, I think I'm beginning to understand you're take on this. I would
say that my primary concern is with a sort of aesthetic of the code
but it's a much more a conceptual aesthetic than anything else. To me,
the main thing to be considered aesthetically is the concept that has
been embedded in the code. However, others have pointed out to me that
the code has a certain visual aesthetic of its own and I agree, in
some cases. I have exhibited some of these and presented framed prints
of the code, with colorful syntax highlighting and they were quite
pleasing to look at. Below each framed code was a computer running
that code. The idea was to highlight the fact that there was much more
to be gained from an attempted interpretation of the code rather than
only viewing the screen. One of the pieces I exhibited was
"Monochrome" which displays nothing but an empty terminal window.
People kept trying to point out to me that there was something wrong
with one of the computers.

Now that I get where you're going, I would agree with a previous
statement of yours that code is clean. If it is to be runnable code,
it has to be clean (in a sense anyway). I think that for me, "dirty
code" would be code that doesn't run. Something that looks right at
first glance but produces something like this:

syntax error at code.pl line 4, at EOF
Execution of code.pl aborted due to compilation errors.

We could have messy code but as long as it runs, it's still clean.
It's orderly enough for a dumb machine to interpret it successfully.
Therefore it can't be that "dirty".

I think both Douglas and Kristeva are so involved with "humanity" that
it becomes a little difficult for me to really connect them. This is
just a personal thing because my work over the years has made me so
aware of the "unhuman-ness" of our machines and their incapability of
emulating human behavior. I've mentioned in other discussion on this
list that I have no faith at all in "artificial intelligence" in the
sense that it has something to do with machines emulating human
intelligence. To me that's drastically underrating human intelligence.

That being said, I think the point about within/without is
interesting. As I said in my last post,  we have this tendency to
attempt to apply things to ourselves or others as a way of
understanding them and this may cause some people to feel
uncomfortable when they read the "Seedbed" code. The way I've been
explaining it is probably not the way that most people will understand
it. That is, that the program is touching itself because people
unfamiliar with the "touch" command probably can't imagine that that
line of code could mean anything other than what they understand it to
mean. I can imagine that a lot of people will apply this to me, as the
creator of the program and assume that it refers to me touching myself
which actually brings the work even closer to the original "Seedbed".
Damn, now I'm starting to feel embarrassed.

Regarding what you say about "assault", take a look at some of the
other Microcodes. Especially the ones that come with a warning stating
that you shouldn't actually run them. However, the Microcodes are
presented as something that should be run. I've even included an
easy-to-follow how-to. In the case of the "Seedbed" code and people
who might interpret it as mentioned above, I can also imagine a
certain fear of running them. A fear of what the portions of the code
that they don't understand might produce. Who knows, they might also
be "erotically" curious which would inevitably bring about
disappointment.

As far as what sort of response I want goes, for the Microcodes in
general, all I want really is to arouse curiosity. I want people to be
curious about what the code means and what the code does. And that's
part of the reason for keeping them short. People are less likely to
consider it an overwhelming task to research what the code actually
does regardless of what it produces on the screen.

best r.
Pall

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> What you call the absurdity is there even in the original; one doesn't see
> Acconci doing anything (there's documentation of course) - it's all within
> the register of the imaginary. It could even be considered a black box - but
> a piece which also implies the box's abject.
>
> I don't think I'm 'simply' pointing out anything; as we both agreed, we're
> interested in different things - I'm following, say, Mary Douglas and
> Kristeva here in terms of issues of purity, danger, abjection, within-and-
> without the body, and you're concerned, I think, with the aesthetics of
> micro-codes, which may well imply a different form of reading. You're coding
> what was originally 'dirty' and I'm curious about the dirtiness of code. And
> that can go in all sorts of directions - towards the physical labor that
> went into code production and/or production of the technologies that allow
> the code to 'do something,' the potential abject within the code - that
> example of the fan or I think of nn's (Antiorp) protection of Nato 55 - or
> her style for that matter - not to mention the problems of potential wells,
> quantum tunneling, etc.
>
> You say "But the interesting thing is that
>>
>> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>> interpretation of the code."
>
> and I'm curious what sort of response the code elicits, what sort of
> response you want? (As far as I can tell, not programming) the code is
> beautiful, it has its own aesthetics and playfulness. Seedbed on the other
> hand was an odd sort of simultaneous assault and deflection that perhaps
> (any) code can't touch# at all?
>
> - Alan
>
> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>
>> Hi Alan,
>> I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>> idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>> the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>> simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>> responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>> itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>> understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>> to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>> else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>> interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>> consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>> there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>> the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>> ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>> I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>> will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>> mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>>
>> best r.
>> Pall
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> (Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with
>>> its
>>> sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then the
>>> burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's all
>>> content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it that
>>> way.
>>> In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
>>> char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So it's
>>> uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan
>>>
>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> i don't know perl, so this is c code...
>>>>
>>>> please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and sweaty...
>>>> please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then down...
>>>> until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
>>>>
>>>> my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and is
>>>> chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you know,
>>>> there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
>>>> 'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
>>>>
>>>> there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
>>>> step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
>>>> but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
>>>> and i'm getting confused.
>>>>
>>>> this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
>>>> adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
>>>> language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> james.
>>>> ----
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> #include <stdio.h>
>>>> #include <string.h>
>>>> #include <stdlib.h>
>>>>
>>>> char* strorig=
>>>> "I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
>>>> I am going to come on your face and \
>>>> I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
>>>> I am so turned on by it and \
>>>> I am masturbating furiously with your image \
>>>> fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
>>>> am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
>>>> i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
>>>>
>>>> int main()
>>>> {
>>>> ? srand(time());
>>>> ? float ramp=0;
>>>> ? float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
>>>> ? int w=0;
>>>> ? char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
>>>> ? strcpy(str,strorig);
>>>> ? char* ptr;
>>>> ? char* end=0;
>>>> ? int i=5000;
>>>> ? int next=0;
>>>> ? while(1){
>>>> ? ? ? ramp+=stz;
>>>> ? ? ? if(!end){
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=str;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>> ? ? ? if(stz>0){
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp>60000.0f){
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>> ? ? ? else if (stz<0){
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp<0){
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>> ? ? ? if(next){
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=0;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? printf("%s\n",ptr);
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=' ';
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=end+1;
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=0;
>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>> ? }
>>>> }
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>>
>>>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good
>>>>> unix
>>>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well
>>>>> as
>>>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's
>>>>> that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
>>>>> parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken
>>>>> down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated,
>>>>> or
>>>>> can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which
>>>>> also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual
>>>>> body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe
>>>>> it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of
>>>>> clarity
>>>>> and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even
>>>>> comfortably,
>>>>> this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might be
>>>>> clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code
>>>>> poorly,
>>>>> so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what
>>>>> you're
>>>>> doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the
>>>>> coded
>>>>> body, the decoded body...
>>>>>
>>>>> - Alan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
>>>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
>>>>>>> missing
>>>>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write
>>>>>>> them
>>>>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>>>>> while(1){
>>>>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> james
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may
>>>>>>>>> see
>>>>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human
>>>>>>>>> activities
>>>>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>> artist
>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *****************************
>> Pall Thayer
>> artist
>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>> *****************************
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>>
>
>
>
> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>



-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************


From corey at toegristle.com  Fri Jul  3 03:55:17 2009
From: corey at toegristle.com (Corey Eiseman)
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 22:55:17 -0400
Subject: [NetBehaviour] toegristle #306
Message-ID: <b272ed5f0907021955n277ff43ek3be80147be72d105@mail.gmail.com>

http://toegristle.com/?id=306

What is this?
This digital collage is the latest entry in a perpetual canvas blog by
Corey Eiseman. The unique thing about this process is that each time
the previous entry is used as a starting point. Put another way, it's
the same image worked on, added to, changed a little bit more as time
marches on, and archived along the way. Some say the hardest part
about making art is knowing when to stop, but with digital media and
blogging on our side, why should we have to?

From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 06:53:23 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 01:53:23 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <e3a34e0e0907021855j70ef5888t3e00f0b2a20bf7a0@mail.gmail.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021855j70ef5888t3e00f0b2a20bf7a0@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907030142310.21323@panix3.panix.com>



I don't think we're far apart at all here; we're both talking about 
response. Clearly there's a relationship between your code and haiku, 
which appears both transparent and 'askew,' as if something elsewhere's 
going on.

I agree to an extent about AI; if an I comes along, it won't be artifical, 
but different altogether; our own minding is intimately tied to the body, 
a body, and bodily experience.

Do you know Andy Oram's Beautiful Code? (Beautiful Code: Leading Program- 
mers Explain How They Think (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) (Paperback) by 
Andy Oram (Editor), Greg Wilson (Editor) - from amazon) - you might be 
interested in it. We had a Codework workshop last year at West Virginia 
University and it was a key text for me - there was also Aesthetic 
Computing (Leonardo Books) by Paul A. Fishwick. Both of these went into 
representation/code in a number of ways I found useful - on the other 
hand, neither dealt with the body, psychology, or psychoanalytics of the 
programmer/user.

Some of the stuff from the workshop ended up at the WVU site - 
clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc and 
http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/search?SearchableText=Codework+Workshop
- It would have been good if you could have come.

- Alan, hope this is of interest

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:

> OK, I think I'm beginning to understand you're take on this. I would
> say that my primary concern is with a sort of aesthetic of the code
> but it's a much more a conceptual aesthetic than anything else. To me,
> the main thing to be considered aesthetically is the concept that has
> been embedded in the code. However, others have pointed out to me that
> the code has a certain visual aesthetic of its own and I agree, in
> some cases. I have exhibited some of these and presented framed prints
> of the code, with colorful syntax highlighting and they were quite
> pleasing to look at. Below each framed code was a computer running
> that code. The idea was to highlight the fact that there was much more
> to be gained from an attempted interpretation of the code rather than
> only viewing the screen. One of the pieces I exhibited was
> "Monochrome" which displays nothing but an empty terminal window.
> People kept trying to point out to me that there was something wrong
> with one of the computers.
>
> Now that I get where you're going, I would agree with a previous
> statement of yours that code is clean. If it is to be runnable code,
> it has to be clean (in a sense anyway). I think that for me, "dirty
> code" would be code that doesn't run. Something that looks right at
> first glance but produces something like this:
>
> syntax error at code.pl line 4, at EOF
> Execution of code.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
>
> We could have messy code but as long as it runs, it's still clean.
> It's orderly enough for a dumb machine to interpret it successfully.
> Therefore it can't be that "dirty".
>
> I think both Douglas and Kristeva are so involved with "humanity" that
> it becomes a little difficult for me to really connect them. This is
> just a personal thing because my work over the years has made me so
> aware of the "unhuman-ness" of our machines and their incapability of
> emulating human behavior. I've mentioned in other discussion on this
> list that I have no faith at all in "artificial intelligence" in the
> sense that it has something to do with machines emulating human
> intelligence. To me that's drastically underrating human intelligence.
>
> That being said, I think the point about within/without is
> interesting. As I said in my last post,  we have this tendency to
> attempt to apply things to ourselves or others as a way of
> understanding them and this may cause some people to feel
> uncomfortable when they read the "Seedbed" code. The way I've been
> explaining it is probably not the way that most people will understand
> it. That is, that the program is touching itself because people
> unfamiliar with the "touch" command probably can't imagine that that
> line of code could mean anything other than what they understand it to
> mean. I can imagine that a lot of people will apply this to me, as the
> creator of the program and assume that it refers to me touching myself
> which actually brings the work even closer to the original "Seedbed".
> Damn, now I'm starting to feel embarrassed.
>
> Regarding what you say about "assault", take a look at some of the
> other Microcodes. Especially the ones that come with a warning stating
> that you shouldn't actually run them. However, the Microcodes are
> presented as something that should be run. I've even included an
> easy-to-follow how-to. In the case of the "Seedbed" code and people
> who might interpret it as mentioned above, I can also imagine a
> certain fear of running them. A fear of what the portions of the code
> that they don't understand might produce. Who knows, they might also
> be "erotically" curious which would inevitably bring about
> disappointment.
>
> As far as what sort of response I want goes, for the Microcodes in
> general, all I want really is to arouse curiosity. I want people to be
> curious about what the code means and what the code does. And that's
> part of the reason for keeping them short. People are less likely to
> consider it an overwhelming task to research what the code actually
> does regardless of what it produces on the screen.
>
> best r.
> Pall
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> What you call the absurdity is there even in the original; one doesn't see
>> Acconci doing anything (there's documentation of course) - it's all within
>> the register of the imaginary. It could even be considered a black box - but
>> a piece which also implies the box's abject.
>>
>> I don't think I'm 'simply' pointing out anything; as we both agreed, we're
>> interested in different things - I'm following, say, Mary Douglas and
>> Kristeva here in terms of issues of purity, danger, abjection, within-and-
>> without the body, and you're concerned, I think, with the aesthetics of
>> micro-codes, which may well imply a different form of reading. You're coding
>> what was originally 'dirty' and I'm curious about the dirtiness of code. And
>> that can go in all sorts of directions - towards the physical labor that
>> went into code production and/or production of the technologies that allow
>> the code to 'do something,' the potential abject within the code - that
>> example of the fan or I think of nn's (Antiorp) protection of Nato 55 - or
>> her style for that matter - not to mention the problems of potential wells,
>> quantum tunneling, etc.
>>
>> You say "But the interesting thing is that
>>>
>>> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>> interpretation of the code."
>>
>> and I'm curious what sort of response the code elicits, what sort of
>> response you want? (As far as I can tell, not programming) the code is
>> beautiful, it has its own aesthetics and playfulness. Seedbed on the other
>> hand was an odd sort of simultaneous assault and deflection that perhaps
>> (any) code can't touch# at all?
>>
>> - Alan
>>
>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Alan,
>>> I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>>> idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>>> the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>>> simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>>> responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>>> itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>>> understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>>> to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>>> else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>>> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>> interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>>> consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>>> there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>>> the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>>> ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>>> I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>>> will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>>> mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>>>
>>> best r.
>>> Pall
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> (Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with
>>>> its
>>>> sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then the
>>>> burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's all
>>>> content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it that
>>>> way.
>>>> In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
>>>> char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So it's
>>>> uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> i don't know perl, so this is c code...
>>>>>
>>>>> please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and sweaty...
>>>>> please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then down...
>>>>> until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
>>>>>
>>>>> my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and is
>>>>> chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you know,
>>>>> there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
>>>>> 'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
>>>>>
>>>>> there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
>>>>> step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
>>>>> but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
>>>>> and i'm getting confused.
>>>>>
>>>>> this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
>>>>> adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
>>>>> language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> james.
>>>>> ----
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> #include <stdio.h>
>>>>> #include <string.h>
>>>>> #include <stdlib.h>
>>>>>
>>>>> char* strorig=
>>>>> "I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
>>>>> I am going to come on your face and \
>>>>> I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
>>>>> I am so turned on by it and \
>>>>> I am masturbating furiously with your image \
>>>>> fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
>>>>> am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
>>>>> i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
>>>>>
>>>>> int main()
>>>>> {
>>>>> ? srand(time());
>>>>> ? float ramp=0;
>>>>> ? float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
>>>>> ? int w=0;
>>>>> ? char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
>>>>> ? strcpy(str,strorig);
>>>>> ? char* ptr;
>>>>> ? char* end=0;
>>>>> ? int i=5000;
>>>>> ? int next=0;
>>>>> ? while(1){
>>>>> ? ? ? ramp+=stz;
>>>>> ? ? ? if(!end){
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=str;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>> ? ? ? if(stz>0){
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp>60000.0f){
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>> ? ? ? else if (stz<0){
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp<0){
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>> ? ? ? if(next){
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=0;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? printf("%s\n",ptr);
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=' ';
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=end+1;
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=0;
>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>> ? }
>>>>> }
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good
>>>>>> unix
>>>>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as well
>>>>>> as
>>>>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so there's
>>>>>> that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
>>>>>> parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be broken
>>>>>> down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated,
>>>>>> or
>>>>>> can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity which
>>>>>> also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or sexual
>>>>>> body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up, maybe
>>>>>> it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of
>>>>>> clarity
>>>>>> and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even
>>>>>> comfortably,
>>>>>> this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might be
>>>>>> clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code
>>>>>> poorly,
>>>>>> so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what
>>>>>> you're
>>>>>> doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the
>>>>>> coded
>>>>>> body, the decoded body...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - Alan
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known pieces
>>>>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
>>>>>>>> missing
>>>>>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can write
>>>>>>>> them
>>>>>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope was
>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well - Alan
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>>>>>> while(1){
>>>>>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>> james
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely may
>>>>>>>>>> see
>>>>>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human
>>>>>>>>>> activities
>>>>>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *****************************
>>> Pall Thayer
>>> artist
>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>> *****************************
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> *****************************
> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://www.this.is/pallit
> *****************************
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>



| Alan Sondheim Mail archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
| Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
| sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim

From helen at creative-catalyst.com  Fri Jul  3 09:23:08 2009
From: helen at creative-catalyst.com (helen varley jamieson)
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:23:08 +0200
Subject: [NetBehaviour] artists who don't fly ...
Message-ID: <4A4DBFEC.9010609@creative-catalyst.com>



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	A Promising Family Picnic
Date: 	Fri, 3 Jul 2009 07:23:31 +0000 (GMT)
From: 	Lena Simic <lenasimic at yahoo.co.uk>
To: 	lenasimic at hotmail.com



A Promising Family Picnic by The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home,  Artsadmin, London, May 2009 - part of Two Degrees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeExL8p9u10
 
 
 
 


      



-- 
____________________________________________________________

helen varley jamieson: creative catalyst       
helen at creative-catalyst.com   
http://www.creative-catalyst.com
http://www.avatarbodycollision.org
http://www.upstage.org.nz
http://www.writerfind.com/hjamieson.htm
____________________________________________________________


From olga.panades at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 09:55:32 2009
From: olga.panades at gmail.com (Olga)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 09:55:32 +0100
Subject: [NetBehaviour] WEB 2.0 SUICIDE MACHINE
Message-ID: <da856be80907030155x38423de5hc00ed7defb269dea@mail.gmail.com>

//////////////////  WEB 2.0 SUICIDE MACHINE  /////////////////

WORM?s own medialab moddr_ has conjured up a machine that lets you
delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your
fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0
alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_
is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide machine is
maintained. Our services currently runs with facebook.com, myspace.com
and LinkedIn.com! Commit NOW!

The machine consists of a tweaked Linux server installation running on
the release 8.10 of Ubuntu, called Intrepid. Apart from a standard
installation of the HTTP web-server (apache2 with python module),
there are two main additions. First, Selenium RC Control is is a
server which automatically launches and kills browsers and runs as
java applet in the background. It automatically fills in forms, makes
AJAX requests and simulate keystrokes. This all driven by a single
python/cgi script with some additional self-written libraries.

Secondly, each user can watch her suicide action in real-time via a
VNC remote desktop session, displayed on our website via an flash
applet rendered live into the client's webbrowser. Apart from using
Selenium and Python, we were also running some customized bash scripts
plus MySQL in the background for logging and debugging, jquery for the
website and a modified version of the great FlashlightVNC application
built in Flex. Web2.0 Suicide Machine consists of roughly 1500 lines
of self-written code.

http://suicide.moddr.net/


-- 
Olga
http://www.ungravitational.net
http://virtualfirefly.wordpress.com


From olga.panades at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 10:02:44 2009
From: olga.panades at gmail.com (Olga)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 10:02:44 +0100
Subject: [NetBehaviour] Residency at NaREC
Message-ID: <da856be80907030202p365b483bp71c74430d649857a@mail.gmail.com>

Residency at NaREC (New and Renewable Energy Centre)

AV Festival, in partnership with Inspire Northumberland, seek to
appoint an artist in residence at NaREC, the centre of excellence for
new and renewable energy technologies in North East England, based in
Blyth, Northumberland.

The residency will provide an opportunity for an artist to carry out
new research and share ideas in response to one or more areas of
sustainable energy technolology undertaken by NaREC, which are: Marine
Renewables, Offshore Wind, Advanced Photovoltaics, Low
Carbon/Distributed energy and Electrical Networks. The fee for the
residency is ?10,000.

The residency is open to any professional artist working within or
outside the UK, and can be worked flexibly between September -
February 2010 as part of AV Festival 10. The artist will be invited to
give a public presentation about the residency as part of AV Festival
10 which has the theme of energy. The festival dates are 5 - 14 March
2010, and it will take place across Newcastle, Gateshead,
Middlesbrough and Sunderland.

Deadline for proposals: 9am, 22 July 2009
Shortlisting: 24 July 2009
Interviews: 5 August 2009

http://www.avfestival.co.uk/news/opportunities/av-festival-10-announcement-and-call-for-artists

-- 
Olga
http://www.ungravitational.net
http://virtualfirefly.wordpress.com


From info at apo33.org  Fri Jul  3 13:10:15 2009
From: info at apo33.org (APO33)
Date: Fri,  3 Jul 2009 14:10:15 +0200
Subject: [NetBehaviour] streaming now!! rainforest IV - David Tudor - Area10
	/ london
Message-ID: <20090703141015.115351qqi2ft0ogs@apo33.org>

A10lab, Area10, Apo33, Noise=Noise, Beyond Signal, Fibrr Records &  
Sound Research Practice, Goldsmiths presents:

RAINFOREST IV - DAVID TUDOR


"a collaborative environmental work, spatially mixing the live sounds  
of suspended sculptures and found objects, with their transformed  
reflections in an audio system. "

//////////////
STREAMING NOW
/////////////


During 2 days, if you couldn't join us, you could listen at us :
http://stream.r23.cc:2323/rainforest.mp3.m3u

and tomorrow even watch the all installation :-)
http://stream.r23.cc:2323/rainforest.ogg.m3u

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Come and see this mad installation!!!

PERFORMANCE & INSTALLATION

3rd & 4th of July - from 2pm to 23pm


?10 (online booking http://www.wegottickets.com)

?12 (on the door)


at AREA10 PROJECT SPACE
Eagle Wharf
Peckham Hill Street
London - SE15 5JT
(White building behind the Library)

Buses: 12, 36, 37, 63, 78, 436, 345, 177, 312, 343 Train: Peckham Rye Station

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Performed by

RYAN JORDAN
JULIEN OTTAVI
KASPER T TOEPLITZ
JEAN-BAPTISTE THIEBAUT
JOHN BOWERS
DOMINIQUE LEROY
PHILIP JULIAN
CHRIS WEAVER
JENNY PICKETT
RYO IKESHIRO
DAWN SCARFE
ANDY WHEDDON
DUNCAN RAVENHALL
ANTONIS ANTONIOU

and more

Thanks to ResonanceFM for their support!

-- 
AKA THE NOISER & NANOFAMAS

"the world is noise"

http://www.noiser.org
http://www.apo33.org
http://www.a10lab.info
http://fibrr.apo33.org
http://ecos.crealab.info
http://www.a10lab.info/mutation
http://www.a10lab.info/scieprotocol

-- 
APO33
space of research and experimentation
http://www.apo33.org
info at apo33.org



From james at jwm-art.net  Fri Jul  3 15:20:30 2009
From: james at jwm-art.net (james morris)
Date: Fri,  3 Jul 2009 15:20:30 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <fk3coBjE.1246630830.5692560.james@jwm-art.net>


Hi Pall,

I've got to admit that I've had trouble too, understanding your
MicroCodes. Sometimes I think I get it, other times I read what you've
written and think I've been misunderstanding.

The formal interpretation of code is instinctive when I view it, so
trying to read code as something else, to value my human interpretation
almost cut off from the formal meaning is really quite difficult that it
just does not happen.

Consequently my response is (or can be) almost blind to a human response,
and involves elaborating upon the code. I always want code to do more,
for the computer's interpretation of it put into action, to be
satisfying for the viewer. So I don't think you're being stubborn, as
although the concept is quite simple, it can be difficult to hold in
ones mind, so stubborn repetition is quite useful.


james.



On 2/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi Alan,
>I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>
>best r.
>Pall
....


From pallthay at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 15:23:45 2009
From: pallthay at gmail.com (Pall Thayer)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 14:23:45 +0000
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907030142310.21323@panix3.panix.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021855j70ef5888t3e00f0b2a20bf7a0@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907030142310.21323@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <e3a34e0e0907030723xce14ccfu2136df55b0711bb7@mail.gmail.com>

I think we are slowly converging on the same point.

The workshop looks interesting. I've only skimmed through some of the
documentation on the web but there were a couple of things that jumped
out at me. First of all, I really like this comment attributed to you:
"Unlike programming, in the creative work I do, there are no errors."

This is a decision that artists working with programming code have to
make. Does it matter whether or not the code can run? In some cases it
doesn't. The work is created solely for the code to exist as code.
Therefore, just as you mentioned, there are no errors. I made the
conscious decision that Microcodes have to be runnable. They are about
the duality of the code and the running process, therefore there can
be errors. It feels very strange to talk about a work of art that can
actually be "incorrect".

Another thing that caught my eye is actually closely related to the
above. It's the subtitle of the workshop: "Exploring relations between
creating writing practices and software engineering". I really have a
problem with that because art is not engineered and really has nothing
in common with things that are engineered. To me, "software
engineering" is something that is more or less incompatible with art.
It's like the two are the opposite ends of a long stick. One is based
on clear aims with distinct goals and timelines in mind whereas the
other is based on a more or less chaotic flow of open ended ideas
throughout the creative process. In art, engineering and execution
become one. Software engineering is about creating a striated order
within which to execute development. When we're looking at
correlations between art creation and software creation, we don't need
to look to "software engineering". We need to look more at software
that is developed in a similar fashion. Open ended and chaotic.

Pall

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 5:53 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> I don't think we're far apart at all here; we're both talking about
> response. Clearly there's a relationship between your code and haiku, which
> appears both transparent and 'askew,' as if something elsewhere's going on.
>
> I agree to an extent about AI; if an I comes along, it won't be artifical,
> but different altogether; our own minding is intimately tied to the body, a
> body, and bodily experience.
>
> Do you know Andy Oram's Beautiful Code? (Beautiful Code: Leading Program-
> mers Explain How They Think (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) (Paperback) by
> Andy Oram (Editor), Greg Wilson (Editor) - from amazon) - you might be
> interested in it. We had a Codework workshop last year at West Virginia
> University and it was a key text for me - there was also Aesthetic Computing
> (Leonardo Books) by Paul A. Fishwick. Both of these went into
> representation/code in a number of ways I found useful - on the other hand,
> neither dealt with the body, psychology, or psychoanalytics of the
> programmer/user.
>
> Some of the stuff from the workshop ended up at the WVU site -
> clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc and
> http://clc.as.wvu.edu:8080/clc/search?SearchableText=Codework+Workshop
> - It would have been good if you could have come.
>
> - Alan, hope this is of interest
>
> On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>
>> OK, I think I'm beginning to understand you're take on this. I would
>> say that my primary concern is with a sort of aesthetic of the code
>> but it's a much more a conceptual aesthetic than anything else. To me,
>> the main thing to be considered aesthetically is the concept that has
>> been embedded in the code. However, others have pointed out to me that
>> the code has a certain visual aesthetic of its own and I agree, in
>> some cases. I have exhibited some of these and presented framed prints
>> of the code, with colorful syntax highlighting and they were quite
>> pleasing to look at. Below each framed code was a computer running
>> that code. The idea was to highlight the fact that there was much more
>> to be gained from an attempted interpretation of the code rather than
>> only viewing the screen. One of the pieces I exhibited was
>> "Monochrome" which displays nothing but an empty terminal window.
>> People kept trying to point out to me that there was something wrong
>> with one of the computers.
>>
>> Now that I get where you're going, I would agree with a previous
>> statement of yours that code is clean. If it is to be runnable code,
>> it has to be clean (in a sense anyway). I think that for me, "dirty
>> code" would be code that doesn't run. Something that looks right at
>> first glance but produces something like this:
>>
>> syntax error at code.pl line 4, at EOF
>> Execution of code.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
>>
>> We could have messy code but as long as it runs, it's still clean.
>> It's orderly enough for a dumb machine to interpret it successfully.
>> Therefore it can't be that "dirty".
>>
>> I think both Douglas and Kristeva are so involved with "humanity" that
>> it becomes a little difficult for me to really connect them. This is
>> just a personal thing because my work over the years has made me so
>> aware of the "unhuman-ness" of our machines and their incapability of
>> emulating human behavior. I've mentioned in other discussion on this
>> list that I have no faith at all in "artificial intelligence" in the
>> sense that it has something to do with machines emulating human
>> intelligence. To me that's drastically underrating human intelligence.
>>
>> That being said, I think the point about within/without is
>> interesting. As I said in my last post, ?we have this tendency to
>> attempt to apply things to ourselves or others as a way of
>> understanding them and this may cause some people to feel
>> uncomfortable when they read the "Seedbed" code. The way I've been
>> explaining it is probably not the way that most people will understand
>> it. That is, that the program is touching itself because people
>> unfamiliar with the "touch" command probably can't imagine that that
>> line of code could mean anything other than what they understand it to
>> mean. I can imagine that a lot of people will apply this to me, as the
>> creator of the program and assume that it refers to me touching myself
>> which actually brings the work even closer to the original "Seedbed".
>> Damn, now I'm starting to feel embarrassed.
>>
>> Regarding what you say about "assault", take a look at some of the
>> other Microcodes. Especially the ones that come with a warning stating
>> that you shouldn't actually run them. However, the Microcodes are
>> presented as something that should be run. I've even included an
>> easy-to-follow how-to. In the case of the "Seedbed" code and people
>> who might interpret it as mentioned above, I can also imagine a
>> certain fear of running them. A fear of what the portions of the code
>> that they don't understand might produce. Who knows, they might also
>> be "erotically" curious which would inevitably bring about
>> disappointment.
>>
>> As far as what sort of response I want goes, for the Microcodes in
>> general, all I want really is to arouse curiosity. I want people to be
>> curious about what the code means and what the code does. And that's
>> part of the reason for keeping them short. People are less likely to
>> consider it an overwhelming task to research what the code actually
>> does regardless of what it produces on the screen.
>>
>> best r.
>> Pall
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> What you call the absurdity is there even in the original; one doesn't
>>> see
>>> Acconci doing anything (there's documentation of course) - it's all
>>> within
>>> the register of the imaginary. It could even be considered a black box -
>>> but
>>> a piece which also implies the box's abject.
>>>
>>> I don't think I'm 'simply' pointing out anything; as we both agreed,
>>> we're
>>> interested in different things - I'm following, say, Mary Douglas and
>>> Kristeva here in terms of issues of purity, danger, abjection,
>>> within-and-
>>> without the body, and you're concerned, I think, with the aesthetics of
>>> micro-codes, which may well imply a different form of reading. You're
>>> coding
>>> what was originally 'dirty' and I'm curious about the dirtiness of code.
>>> And
>>> that can go in all sorts of directions - towards the physical labor that
>>> went into code production and/or production of the technologies that
>>> allow
>>> the code to 'do something,' the potential abject within the code - that
>>> example of the fan or I think of nn's (Antiorp) protection of Nato 55 -
>>> or
>>> her style for that matter - not to mention the problems of potential
>>> wells,
>>> quantum tunneling, etc.
>>>
>>> You say "But the interesting thing is that
>>>>
>>>> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>>> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>>> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>>> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>>> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>>> interpretation of the code."
>>>
>>> and I'm curious what sort of response the code elicits, what sort of
>>> response you want? (As far as I can tell, not programming) the code is
>>> beautiful, it has its own aesthetics and playfulness. Seedbed on the
>>> other
>>> hand was an odd sort of simultaneous assault and deflection that perhaps
>>> (any) code can't touch# at all?
>>>
>>> - Alan
>>>
>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>> I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>>>> idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>>>> the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>>>> simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>>>> responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>>>> itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>>>> understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>>>> to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>>>> else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>>>> whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>>> by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>>> (and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>>> general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>>> meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>>> interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>>>> consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>>>> there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>>>> the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>>>> ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>>>> I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>>>> will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>>>> mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>>>>
>>>> best r.
>>>> Pall
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 11:16 PM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> (Sorry to go on at length here.) This is really interesting to me, with
>>>>> its
>>>>> sense of barriers at both ends, almost pure playing-fields, and then
>>>>> the
>>>>> burst of (abject) 'content' following the includes - of course it's all
>>>>> content, the extrusion is extrusion to the extent we're reading it that
>>>>> way.
>>>>> In any case, this is what I was thinking about, and the central
>>>>> char* appears to almost ooze out across the clarity of the rest. So
>>>>> it's
>>>>> uncomfortable itself, as if empathetic to the seedbed piece. - Alan
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> i don't know perl, so this is c code...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> please find a ramp ramping up the cpu usage until it's hot and
>>>>>> sweaty...
>>>>>> please find a ramp ramping up and then down and then up and then
>>>>>> down...
>>>>>> until the cpu is hot and sweaty....
>>>>>>
>>>>>> my usual dumbass shit. a numerical ramp, the step value is random and
>>>>>> is
>>>>>> chosen when the ramp has reached either end of it's limit. as you
>>>>>> know,
>>>>>> there are no true random number generators... srand(time()) SEEDs the
>>>>>> 'random' number generator with the time since epochs of seconds 1970.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> there's a terribly rude piece of text. pointer variables are used to
>>>>>> step through the text one word at a time. i would have used strpos
>>>>>> but could not find a man page for it. maybe it is a PHP function
>>>>>> and i'm getting confused.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> this demonstrates how code can easily begin to get complex without
>>>>>> adding actually doing very much at all. but then c is a low level
>>>>>> language, and probably the wrong choice but i felt like using it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> james.
>>>>>> ----
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> #include <stdio.h>
>>>>>> #include <string.h>
>>>>>> #include <stdlib.h>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> char* strorig=
>>>>>> "I am laying here masturbating fantasizing about you and \
>>>>>> I am going to come on your face and \
>>>>>> I am rubbing my sweaty dirty self on you and \
>>>>>> I am so turned on by it and \
>>>>>> I am masturbating furiously with your image \
>>>>>> fixed in my mind and am i so so hot now and \
>>>>>> am blistering my genitals but i love the pain of it and \
>>>>>> i am going to come all over you uhh ohhh uhhh ohhh.";
>>>>>>
>>>>>> int main()
>>>>>> {
>>>>>> ? srand(time());
>>>>>> ? float ramp=0;
>>>>>> ? float stz=(rand()%10+10)/100.0f;
>>>>>> ? int w=0;
>>>>>> ? char* str=malloc((strlen(strorig)+1)*sizeof(char));
>>>>>> ? strcpy(str,strorig);
>>>>>> ? char* ptr;
>>>>>> ? char* end=0;
>>>>>> ? int i=5000;
>>>>>> ? int next=0;
>>>>>> ? while(1){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ramp+=stz;
>>>>>> ? ? ? if(!end){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=str;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>>> ? ? ? if(stz>0){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp>60000.0f){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=-(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>>> ? ? ? else if (stz<0){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? if(ramp<0){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? stz=(rand()%10+10)/1000.0f;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ? ? next=1;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? }
>>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>>> ? ? ? if(next){
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=0;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? printf("%s\n",ptr);
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? *end=' ';
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? ptr=end+1;
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? end=strstr(ptr," ");
>>>>>> ? ? ? ? ? next=0;
>>>>>> ? ? ? }
>>>>>> ? }
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch (good
>>>>>>> unix
>>>>>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as
>>>>>>> well
>>>>>>> as
>>>>>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so
>>>>>>> there's
>>>>>>> that barrier which is interesting and the question is - which for me
>>>>>>> parallels the clean/dirty avatar phenomenology - how can that be
>>>>>>> broken
>>>>>>> down psychologically - how can that sort of dis/comfort be recreated,
>>>>>>> or
>>>>>>> can't it? With avatar, it's useful to create a kind of iconicity
>>>>>>> which
>>>>>>> also functions on an indexical plain - texturing a human face or
>>>>>>> sexual
>>>>>>> body for example. But code/ascii (pre-compiling which brings up,
>>>>>>> maybe
>>>>>>> it's in the binaries that this stuff lies) has a different kind of
>>>>>>> clarity
>>>>>>> and it's hard to see how dis/embodiment might function, even
>>>>>>> comfortably,
>>>>>>> this way. The difference between code as medium (strict code) might
>>>>>>> be
>>>>>>> clearer than ways of smudging it. Obviously I don't code, or code
>>>>>>> poorly,
>>>>>>> so in a way I don't know what I'm talking about, and I admire what
>>>>>>> you're
>>>>>>> doing - I'm just wondering about things like the body of code, the
>>>>>>> coded
>>>>>>> body, the decoded body...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> - Alan
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known
>>>>>>>> pieces
>>>>>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>>>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>>>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>>>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>>>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>>>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>>>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I knew Vito well back then and visited Seedbed many times - you're
>>>>>>>>> missing
>>>>>>>>> the grittiness & the compression of the incline - hope you can
>>>>>>>>> write
>>>>>>>>> them
>>>>>>>>> in! The work was obviously uncomfortable, and anyone on the slope
>>>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>> target of his fantasizing, not to mention the reverse as well -
>>>>>>>>> Alan
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Wed, 1 Jul 2009, james morris wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Ahh! I deleted them! But they're archived on the net.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> a less clear version of seedbed:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>>>>>>>> $myself = `id -un`;
>>>>>>>>>> $mybody = "/home/$myself";
>>>>>>>>>> while(1){
>>>>>>>>>> ?`touch $mybody`;
>>>>>>>>>> ?print `ls -ld $mybody`;
>>>>>>>>>> ?print `finger $myself at localhost`;
>>>>>>>>>> }
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>>> james
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 1/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> ....revisited electronically. Those who follow the list closely
>>>>>>>>>>> may
>>>>>>>>>>> see
>>>>>>>>>>> immediately that this was inspired in part by James Morris'
>>>>>>>>>>> 'Microcrudities' a while back. Trying to emulate such human
>>>>>>>>>>> activities
>>>>>>>>>>> in short code is really interesting.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> http://pallit.lhi.is/microcodes/index.php?code_id=29
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>>>>>> artist
>>>>>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>>>>>> *****************************
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *****************************
>>>> Pall Thayer
>>>> artist
>>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>>> *****************************
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
>>> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
>>> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
>>> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *****************************
>> Pall Thayer
>> artist
>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>> *****************************
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>>
>
>
>
> | Alan Sondheim Mail archive: ?http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
> | Webpage (directory) at http://www.alansondheim.org
> | sondheim at panix.com, sondheim at gmail.org, tel US 718-813-3285
> ! http://www.facebook.com/alan.sondheim
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>



-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************


From pallthay at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 15:38:15 2009
From: pallthay at gmail.com (Pall Thayer)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 14:38:15 +0000
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <fk3coBjE.1246630830.5692560.james@jwm-art.net>
References: <e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
	<fk3coBjE.1246630830.5692560.james@jwm-art.net>
Message-ID: <e3a34e0e0907030738o3df8f5dfj4e5c05a5bc1252ce@mail.gmail.com>

The most difficult part of conceptual art is sticking to your concept.

Pall

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:20 PM, james morris<james at jwm-art.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Pall,
>
> I've got to admit that I've had trouble too, understanding your
> MicroCodes. Sometimes I think I get it, other times I read what you've
> written and think I've been misunderstanding.
>
> The formal interpretation of code is instinctive when I view it, so
> trying to read code as something else, to value my human interpretation
> almost cut off from the formal meaning is really quite difficult that it
> just does not happen.
>
> Consequently my response is (or can be) almost blind to a human response,
> and involves elaborating upon the code. I always want code to do more,
> for the computer's interpretation of it put into action, to be
> satisfying for the viewer. So I don't think you're being stubborn, as
> although the concept is quite simple, it can be difficult to hold in
> ones mind, so stubborn repetition is quite useful.
>
>
> james.
>
>
>
> On 2/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi Alan,
>>I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>>idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>>the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>>simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>>responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>>itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>>understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>>to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>>else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>>whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>>consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>>there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>>the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>>ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>>I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>>will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>>mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>>
>>best r.
>>Pall
> ....
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>



-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************

From james at jwm-art.net  Fri Jul  3 16:04:37 2009
From: james at jwm-art.net (james morris)
Date: Fri,  3 Jul 2009 16:04:37 +0100 (BST)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <e3a34e0e0907030738o3df8f5dfj4e5c05a5bc1252ce@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <gwab23Db.1246633477.3488320.james@jwm-art.net>


On 3/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:

>The most difficult part of conceptual art is sticking to your concept.

i'm only human.



>On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:20 PM, james morris<james at jwm-art.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Pall,
>>
>> I've got to admit that I've had trouble too, understanding your
>> MicroCodes. Sometimes I think I get it, other times I read what you've
>> written and think I've been misunderstanding.
>>
>> The formal interpretation of code is instinctive when I view it, so
>> trying to read code as something else, to value my human interpretation
>> almost cut off from the formal meaning is really quite difficult that it
>> just does not happen.
>>
>> Consequently my response is (or can be) almost blind to a human response,
>> and involves elaborating upon the code. I always want code to do more,
>> for the computer's interpretation of it put into action, to be
>> satisfying for the viewer. So I don't think you're being stubborn, as
>> although the concept is quite simple, it can be difficult to hold in
>> ones mind, so stubborn repetition is quite useful.
>>
>>
>> james.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi Alan,
>>>I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>>>idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>>>the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>>>simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>>>responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>>>itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>>>understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>>>to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>>>else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>>>whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>>by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>>(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>>general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>>meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>>interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>>>consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>>>there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>>>the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>>>ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>>>I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>>>will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>>>mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>>>
>>>best r.
>>>Pall
>> ....
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>
>
>
>--
>*****************************
>Pall Thayer
>artist
>http://www.this.is/pallit
>*****************************
>_______________________________________________
>NetBehaviour mailing list
>NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>


From dave.miller.uk at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 16:22:29 2009
From: dave.miller.uk at gmail.com (dave miller)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 16:22:29 +0100
Subject: [NetBehaviour] WEB 2.0 SUICIDE MACHINE
In-Reply-To: <da856be80907030155x38423de5hc00ed7defb269dea@mail.gmail.com>
References: <da856be80907030155x38423de5hc00ed7defb269dea@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e5eac00a0907030822w2ef9f50exbe604d8e25a9fb17@mail.gmail.com>

Sounds a lovely idea. How does this work? I thought you couldn't
delete your Facebook profile - once you've registered they keep all
your info on their database for ever - or have they stopped doing
that?

dave

2009/7/3 Olga <olga.panades at gmail.com>:
> ////////////////// ?WEB 2.0 SUICIDE MACHINE ?/////////////////
>
> WORM?s own medialab moddr_ has conjured up a machine that lets you
> delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your
> fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0
> alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_
> is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide machine is
> maintained. Our services currently runs with facebook.com, myspace.com
> and LinkedIn.com! Commit NOW!
>
> The machine consists of a tweaked Linux server installation running on
> the release 8.10 of Ubuntu, called Intrepid. Apart from a standard
> installation of the HTTP web-server (apache2 with python module),
> there are two main additions. First, Selenium RC Control is is a
> server which automatically launches and kills browsers and runs as
> java applet in the background. It automatically fills in forms, makes
> AJAX requests and simulate keystrokes. This all driven by a single
> python/cgi script with some additional self-written libraries.
>
> Secondly, each user can watch her suicide action in real-time via a
> VNC remote desktop session, displayed on our website via an flash
> applet rendered live into the client's webbrowser. Apart from using
> Selenium and Python, we were also running some customized bash scripts
> plus MySQL in the background for logging and debugging, jquery for the
> website and a modified version of the great FlashlightVNC application
> built in Flex. Web2.0 Suicide Machine consists of roughly 1500 lines
> of self-written code.
>
> http://suicide.moddr.net/
>
>
> --
> Olga
> http://www.ungravitational.net
> http://virtualfirefly.wordpress.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>


From pallthay at gmail.com  Fri Jul  3 16:25:14 2009
From: pallthay at gmail.com (Pall Thayer)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 15:25:14 +0000
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <gwab23Db.1246633477.3488320.james@jwm-art.net>
References: <e3a34e0e0907030738o3df8f5dfj4e5c05a5bc1252ce@mail.gmail.com>
	<gwab23Db.1246633477.3488320.james@jwm-art.net>
Message-ID: <e3a34e0e0907030825x4c2e498cs2b10847451fe5daf@mail.gmail.com>

That's why we need computers. Sometimes we're just too human.

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 3:04 PM, james morris<james at jwm-art.net> wrote:
>
> On 3/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The most difficult part of conceptual art is sticking to your concept.
>
> i'm only human.
>
>
>
>>On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 2:20 PM, james morris<james at jwm-art.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Pall,
>>>
>>> I've got to admit that I've had trouble too, understanding your
>>> MicroCodes. Sometimes I think I get it, other times I read what you've
>>> written and think I've been misunderstanding.
>>>
>>> The formal interpretation of code is instinctive when I view it, so
>>> trying to read code as something else, to value my human interpretation
>>> almost cut off from the formal meaning is really quite difficult that it
>>> just does not happen.
>>>
>>> Consequently my response is (or can be) almost blind to a human response,
>>> and involves elaborating upon the code. I always want code to do more,
>>> for the computer's interpretation of it put into action, to be
>>> satisfying for the viewer. So I don't think you're being stubborn, as
>>> although the concept is quite simple, it can be difficult to hold in
>>> ones mind, so stubborn repetition is quite useful.
>>>
>>>
>>> james.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/7/2009, "Pall Thayer" <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi Alan,
>>>>I'm probably just being overly stubborn to make a point. Of course the
>>>>idea of the "Seedbed" code is to play around with the dual meaning in
>>>>the line "touch $myself". And if I understand you correctly you're
>>>>simply pointing out the ways in which words and images evoke emotional
>>>>responses even though whatever mediates the words and/or images is
>>>>itself incapable of such emotional responses. This is just our way of
>>>>understanding things. We attempt, maybe even at a subconscious level,
>>>>to apply whatever is being mediated to our own selves (or someone
>>>>else's) to see how that affects us. But the interesting thing is that
>>>>whereas we usually see programming code as something to be interpreted
>>>>by a computer and then we interpret that interpretation, in this case
>>>>(and in fact this is the underlying concept of the Microcodes in
>>>>general) our interpretation of the code elicits a much stronger, more
>>>>meaningful response than an interpretation of the computer's
>>>>interpretation of the code. This is something I want people to
>>>>consider and be aware of, that's why I'm being so stubborn. I'm sure
>>>>there are people out there who experience some discomfort in reading
>>>>the "Seedbed" code. Some might even feel embarrassed, turned on,
>>>>ashamed or all of the above. If I didn't want people to feel this way
>>>>I wouldn't have associated it with "Seedbed". But I hope that they
>>>>will take the time to discover what the words as computer code really
>>>>mean and see the absurdity of it all.
>>>>
>>>>best r.
>>>>Pall
>>> ....
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
>>> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>*****************************
>>Pall Thayer
>>artist
>>http://www.this.is/pallit
>>*****************************
>>_______________________________________________
>>NetBehaviour mailing list
>>NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
>>http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>



-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://www.this.is/pallit
*****************************

From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 18:08:31 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 13:08:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] sonnet +8 -2
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907031308250.11479@panix3.panix.com>



sonnet +8 -2

date: illegal time format
usage: date [-ajnu] [-d date]
[-r seconds] [+format] [[[[[[CC]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.SS]]
     0.00s user     0.00s system
     0.00s real     0.00s user     0.00s system
who: Cannot stat `who': No such file or directory
/usr/local/bin/ksh: kill: kill: arguments must be jobs or process ids
test test
usage: tar [-]{crtux}[-befhjklmopqvwzHOPSXZ014578] [archive] [blocksize]
            [-C directory] [-T file] [-s replstr] [file ...]
find: find: No such file or directory
echo
usage: sleep seconds
sync sync
ping: Cannot resolve "ping" (Unknown host)
Password:
Login incorrect or refused on this terminal.
cat: cat: No such file or directory
/usr/local/bin/bash: /usr/local/bin/bash: cannot execute binary file
/usr/local/bin/ksh: exit: bad number



From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 18:27:04 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 13:27:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <e3a34e0e0907030723xce14ccfu2136df55b0711bb7@mail.gmail.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021855j70ef5888t3e00f0b2a20bf7a0@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907030142310.21323@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907030723xce14ccfu2136df55b0711bb7@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907031319330.23292@panix3.panix.com>



On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:

> I think we are slowly converging on the same point.
>
> The workshop looks interesting. I've only skimmed through some of the
> documentation on the web but there were a couple of things that jumped
> out at me. First of all, I really like this comment attributed to you:
> "Unlike programming, in the creative work I do, there are no errors."
>

Thanks - I think I worded it better at the time - the idea was that 
artists tend to find errors a 'further step' that's often embodied in 
their work.

> This is a decision that artists working with programming code have to
> make. Does it matter whether or not the code can run? In some cases it
> doesn't.
> The work is created solely for the code to exist as code.

(At one point a few years ago I did some simple visual basic programming - 
you'd have an image, click on it, and 'something' would happen to the 
image - it would be transformed one way or another. And a lot of the time 
I had little idea what would happen - but it was all of interest - it 
felt as if the graphics were asserting themeselves, against whatever I 
thought I was doing.)

> Therefore, just as you mentioned, there are no errors. I made the
> conscious decision that Microcodes have to be runnable. They are about
> the duality of the code and the running process, therefore there can
> be errors. It feels very strange to talk about a work of art that can
> actually be "incorrect".

Do you think if it didn't run, i.e. if it was incorrect in your sense, it 
wouldn't be a work of art? I'd think that 'incorrect' would transform the 
aesthetics of the piece, obviously, but the work or aesthetics wouldn't be 
incorrect, just different. -
>
> Another thing that caught my eye is actually closely related to the
> above. It's the subtitle of the workshop: "Exploring relations between
> creating writing practices and software engineering". I really have a
> problem with that because art is not engineered and really has nothing
> in common with things that are engineered. To me, "software
> engineering" is something that is more or less incompatible with art.
> It's like the two are the opposite ends of a long stick. One is based
> on clear aims with distinct goals and timelines in mind whereas the
> other is based on a more or less chaotic flow of open ended ideas
> throughout the creative process. In art, engineering and execution
> become one. Software engineering is about creating a striated order
> within which to execute development. When we're looking at
> correlations between art creation and software creation, we don't need
> to look to "software engineering". We need to look more at software
> that is developed in a similar fashion. Open ended and chaotic.

Well, there were software engineers there of course, and they talked about 
the art of large databases (not only visualization but in the program- 
ming), hierarchical structures, decision-making, the aesthetics of com- 
puting. Everyone also talked about 'pedagogical outcomes' - how to make 
traditional cs courses more creative, and how to embody programming 
issues, such as they are, in artworks. There was a lot of cross-talk which 
was good. I particularly like (in general) Wendy Chun in this regard - 
she's one of the most brilliant theorists I know (however 'theorist' is 
defined). In general I agree with you - and on some levels this kind of 
thing could be reduced to - how does anyone 'think outside the box' - that 
sort of thing which goes back to Edward de Bono and beyond as far as I 
know...

- Alan

>
> Pall
>

From rob at robmyers.org  Fri Jul  3 20:09:15 2009
From: rob at robmyers.org (Rob Myers)
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:09:15 +0100
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <fk3coBjE.1246630830.5692560.james@jwm-art.net>
References: <fk3coBjE.1246630830.5692560.james@jwm-art.net>
Message-ID: <4A4E575B.6080007@robmyers.org>

On 03/07/09 15:20, james morris wrote:
> Hi Pall,
>
> I've got to admit that I've had trouble too, understanding your
> MicroCodes. Sometimes I think I get it, other times I read what you've
> written and think I've been misunderstanding.

I reviewed Pall's earlier Microcodes for Furtherfield, which may provide 
a different angle on them -

http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=337

- Rob.

From sondheim at panix.com  Fri Jul  3 22:52:49 2009
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 17:52:49 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <4A4E575B.6080007@robmyers.org>
References: <fk3coBjE.1246630830.5692560.james@jwm-art.net>
	<4A4E575B.6080007@robmyers.org>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907031738180.29140@panix3.panix.com>



I must say first I really like the review; I have to take issue, however, 
with a couple of points which may be central to you -

"I, and others, have claimed that artists who use computers need to be 
able to program."

- I strongly resist this (not because I can't program - in fact I've 
programmed in basic, pascal, vb, perl, unix scripting - I just don't have 
well-developed skills in these) because I think that 'need' or 'should' 
have to be taken out of critique almost a priori. For example I do 'stuff' 
in Second Life that involves programming - which for me also involves 
copying, kludging, cheating, hacking, etc. I work with available tech and 
my available knowledge as do most people I know. As far as impressionist 
painters go - they might have to know nothing at all.

You say "But mastery of tools is a prerequisite for competent expression."
What is a tool? What is competency? What constitutes expression? For that 
matter, what constitutes prerequisites? One of my favorite artists is Vito 
Acconci who had very little of this sort of mastery, if any. I could give 
other examples but the point for me is critical and something I've con- 
cretely fought for at every school I've taught at - mastery is in the eye 
of power, the eye literally of the _master,_ and that's a stranglehold. 
The two best teachers I've ever seen (with records of students doing 
amazingly well for that matter) taught no 'skills' of this sort at all - 
I'm thinking of Lutz Presser in Australia and David Askevold at NSCAD. 
David's classes were free-for-alls - you learned what you wanted to learn 
and learned enough to do what you wanted to do, and that was it. Some of 
his students were showing at Dokumenta.

You mention "A hacker and free software activist I know asked me what 
exactly makes the Microcodes code listings art (interestingly, they didn't 
ask why they are code) - but why would they be art in the first place?" 
Part of your answer is "Firstly, the text of each program listing is 
short enough to be taken in as a single visual composition. When presented 
under the claim that they are art they therefore fall into the tradition 
of conceptual text-as-art." - well there's a lot of cnoceptual art that 
worked from the beginning with dispersed texts - this was important in 
feminist work such as that of Nancy Kitchel, not to mention groups like 
the N.E. Thing Co. which had a conceptual basis.

I feel you're drawing all sorts of distinctions; where you might see these 
as openings to work, I see them as barriers. I really appreciate your 
analysis of the microcodes - it's brilliant - and your description of the 
environment they're produced within - but the idea that a particular level 
of knowledge is necessary to create a 'valid' work of {x}-art, fill it in 
as you please, is really anathema to me. The great thing about the net is 
how open it is; the idea, for example of net.art always seemed behind the 
times with its exclusivity. I think programming can be anything from 
machine language to somebody typing 'date' at the prompt - what's 
important is how it means to a viewer, whether the viewer's moved by it, 
and so forth.

- Alan



On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Rob Myers wrote:

> On 03/07/09 15:20, james morris wrote:
>> Hi Pall,
>>
>> I've got to admit that I've had trouble too, understanding your
>> MicroCodes. Sometimes I think I get it, other times I read what you've
>> written and think I've been misunderstanding.
>
> I reviewed Pall's earlier Microcodes for Furtherfield, which may provide
> a different angle on them -
>
> http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=337
>
> - Rob.
> _______________________________________________
> NetBehaviour mailing list
> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>
>



| Alan Sondheim Mail archive:  http://sondheim.rupamsunyata.org/
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From lotu5 at resist.ca  Fri Jul  3 23:16:32 2009
From: lotu5 at resist.ca (lotu5 at resist.ca)
Date: Fri, 3 Jul 2009 15:16:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0907030142310.21323@panix3.panix.com>
References: <J8ctYOHR.1246546736.2636830.james@jwm-art.net>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907021905560.17959@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021654q369b5420x8e6ae29d2cb445dd@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907022034010.3466@panix3.panix.com>
	<e3a34e0e0907021855j70ef5888t3e00f0b2a20bf7a0@mail.gmail.com>
	<Pine.NEB.4.64.0907030142310.21323@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <e82f2c2a0828707a57e54d509cd0c1a1.squirrel@mail.resist.ca>

At the risk of stating the obvious, perhaps the problem here is that there
is no one essence of this performance, or any performance for that matter.
While you do say "a single 'essence'", and not "the", to me a major part
of the very idea of performance is to create something which is in excess
of language and representation, something which the techne of words or
photo or video don't capture, much less a few lines of code. While I think
the notion of translating a performance into code is interesting, perhaps
what this discussion precisely raises is that there are a multiplicity of
essences, dirtiness, fantasy, masturbation, soreness, mystery, discomfort,
the body, the absence of the body... Your microcodes seem to be a sort of
review or remix of another work, based on your personal interpretation. In
fact, I think that the reduction of the body to a set of files in your
home directory is in itself an abjection and a sadness, a departure from
all the rich, sensual complexity of the body and a reduction to a few
digital bytes. Perhaps the sadness of the digital is expressed very well
here.

>> Pall Thayer wrote:I guess by "the essence" of the work, I'm
>> considering the absolute minimum that it takes to bring to mind
>> "Seedbed" when looking at the code.

Hmm, but here is sounds like you're talking about a simlpe representation,
and I think being very reductive! Wouldn't the absolute minimum be
something like

#!/usr/bin/perl
$p = `seedbed`;

? When in fact, the interesting part is to go beyond simply bringing the
performance to mind, but as the furtherfield review writes, to bring it to
life, to enact it, to redo it, to reperform it, in the form of an actual
running program?


>>>>>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch
>>>>>>> (good
>>>>>>> unix
>>>>>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as
>>>>>>> well
>>>>>>> as
>>>>>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so
>>>>>>> there's

>>>>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known
>>>>>>>> pieces
>>>>>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>>>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>>>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>>>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>>>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>>>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>>>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.