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I would like to recommend Spencer's article on taxonomies and definitions. It explains with clarity and in greater detail the bases for his post. What appeals to me is his recognition of the importance of contexts--that is, that definitions occur in social and cultural contexts and so amount to "readings" rather than definitives. It's a kind of taxonomic relativism in which categories,while necessary to our understanding of digital art, have no final boundaries. And it's an approach which I think most of us can live with, though as I've said in earlier posts, my own predisposition lies with approaches which emphasize context rather than taxonomy. His sense of the relative comes out in two points which I've always found intriguing about computer-based art. 1. the "plasticity of computers", e.g. the "commonality between any two pieces of work may be in no way obvious given the diversity and flexibility of output" 2. this kind of abridgment of boundaries is also a function of the networking, e.g. networks are "antagonistic to the atomistic 'white cube' mode of exhibition. . . . if a piece of work is networked. . .there is an important sense in which the architecture of the space changes. With a network we take a step towards collapsing a space." As to point 1: computers as machines are based on fixed logical structures, but their possibilities, even when fed with the same data, are untold, because these fixed structures are embedded in processors, which yield processing, and process. As to point 2: it's interesting to ask what is the nature of this collapsed space; my view is that it goes inward, it becomes subjective space. This is clearly different from the kind of subjectivity of unity involved in standing before a painting, which is a kind of passive state, a being taken over. But the collapsed space of the network is active and interactive, in part a function of what is on the network, external to us, and in part a function of what we ourselves make of it--it is in part a creature of the responding imagination. Myron Turner At 07:56 AM 30/09/2004, Spencer Roberts wrote: > If you are interested in reading more about Wittgenstinean strategies in > relation to digital media, > or some of the relationships between Turing, Duchamp, surface and > process or just a take on > taxonomy as a form of reading then please feel free to read the essay > that I have been working >on: > > 'Would Duchamp Desire a Turing Machine?' > http://www.anthropo.org.uk/essays/duchampturing.htm