On Mar 17, 2014, at 4:52 AM, roger malina <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> in this frame- i want to argue that the codes of simulations do 'perform'
> and of course the whole field of artificial life art explores this ( the VIDA
> competition is 15 years old this year- a teenager !
Hi List & Roger,
Taking a hint from you. Code is an extension of human thinking. It’s like a score for a symphony. The human mind that wrote the code may be thought of as “the composer.” When a symphony is performed you have musicians and you have the conductor.
You also have the audience. The conductor listens to the way the musicians perform the work and makes sure they are on tempo and on time. He/She also can interpret the work according to the way in which He/She feels it should be played. There’s another part to music an that is the live performance. The audience focuses their hearing and seeing on different performers. They feel the human effort to play the work. They understand and hear the nuances and mannerisms of the players. You might be able to write the algorythm to make all these subtle variations occur but the audience will simply say that sounds like a performance. They know the difference between live and simulation. Jaron Lanier’s book, Who Owns the Future talk about how the human effort is the basis for translation software. This software is now available and it devalues the work of the translators. It’s putting them out of work. So the larger issue in art has always been whether it can be simulated and whether this devalues or obsoletes artists. This get back to the idea in art of form vesus content. Content, theme, emotion, human life and perception are at the core of all art making. You can’t replace that with a machine or a program. The real communication between artist and audience is about what it’s like to be human at any particular time. I use computers and software as tools and also as part of the structural and communication systems existent today. I convey my own emotions, feelings and perceptions about being human using those tools. It’s no different that using a really good microphone to amplify and enhance a human voice. So the short answer is Yes non-human entities can perform but no they can’t make art.
G.H. Hovagimyan
http://nujus.net/~gh
http://nujus.net/~nublog
http://artistsmeeting.org
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