and now to continue my last email, abruptly sent without it having  
been finished:

The question of 'multi-versality', 'uncertainty', 'movement',  
'economy', 'assemblage' - engaged by those as diverse as Foucault,  
Lyotard, D & G, Haraway, Barad, not to mention Turing, Einstein and  
Godel -- is a way to engage the materiality of the information  
technologies/information age that takes into account a different kind  
of 'binary' - a set of zero/one algorithmic codes with a wholly  
different 'unity' than the kind of unity dialectical binary  
(thesis/anti-thesis) totalities assume and articulate. Algorithmic  
binaric zero/ones speak to a kind of 'fractal' unity whose coherence  
'works', ie is made 'coherent' or 'sticky' because of a relational  
assemblage, one that is metynomic and nodal, whose relational  
'togetherness' or 'unity' or 'plane of immanence' gives each parameter  
a 'wholeness' in the same way that the galaxy or solar system can be  
considered 'whole'(ie a system or unity without 'edges', without an  
'outside' -- or for that matter an 'inside') 'ana-concepts' rather  
than the usual metaphysical 'universal' concept per se. They speak to  
questions/actualities of methodological 'intensity' without  
privileging (as in past methodologies) either Time over Space or vice  
versa.

These remarks are, of course, enormously general, and thus quite  
possibly not able to be adequately treated in a forum of this nature,  
but I wanted to raise them to focus attention on a different way of  
teaching what for some of us have become 'foundational' (to the degree  
to which this kind of field can have 'foundations' etc). At Greenwich  
we've been developing a field called 'media arts philosophy practice'  
or 'fractal philosophy', where metamathematics meets the political  
urgency and creative inventiveness of the contemporary arts.

Johnny

----- Message from [log in to unmask] ---------
     Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:10:35 +0000
     From: Professor S Golding <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Professor S Golding <[log in to unmask]>
  Subject: Re: Media Arts Philosophy Practice: a way to re-think the  
converging arts and sciences
       To: [log in to unmask]


> Dear List
> I have been very much enjoying the stimulating new directions various
> interventions on this month's topic have gone -- but haven't been able
> to respond until now, in part because the server linked to our
> University decided to go haywire for about two and a half weeks. (The
> failure of technology at crucial moments - whether giving an address or
> trying to link with the network or, say, preventing nuclear mishaps, is
> in itself not an uninteresting problem with respect to the converging
> arts and sciences!). But I wanted to raise another avenue of
> thought/practice.  This concerns the very first volley tossed out by
> Roger regarding the pedagogy of this 'field' -- to the degree to which
> it can be called 'a' field.
>
> It seems to me that, often without meaning to do so, a lot of
> scholarship/ artistry in the media arts (including visual culture,
> electronic and digital arts, the creative technologies, etc) tends to
> bring in the rather worn-out methods of dialectical analysis - be it
> via a kind of hegelian idealist/speculative move; an orthodox or
> new-left marxist 'historical materialist' structuralist or Frankfurt
> School (here I'm thinking mainly of the work of Adorno - his brilliant
> negative dialectics - or Benjamin's Arcade's project, Theses on
> philosophy etc) or 'post-structuralist' moves (including the Derridian
> notion of 'trace' and with it the  'quasi transcendence' hauntology of
> 'a something to come'). I'm sorry to lump so many intensive and
> important (and differing) types of analyses under one roof (and in one
> sentence), but it seems to me that an emergent field of analysis -- one
> that disrupts questions of time and space in a way that establishes the
> multiversality (rather than universality)
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Professor S Golding
> Director
> Institute for the Converging Arts & Sciences (ICAS)
> The School of Humanities and Social Sciences
> University of Greenwich, London SE10 9LS
> KW 130
> tel: +44(0)20 8331 8948
> fax: +44(0)20 8331 8905
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> University of Greenwich, a charity and company limited by guarantee,
> registered in England (reg. no. 986729).  Registered office:
> Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Greenwich, London SE10 9LS.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------


----- End message from [log in to unmask] -----



--
Professor S Golding
Director
Institute for the Converging Arts & Sciences (ICAS)
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Greenwich, London SE10 9LS
KW 130
tel: +44(0)20 8331 8948
fax: +44(0)20 8331 8905
--------------------------------------------------------------------
University of Greenwich, a charity and company limited by guarantee,
registered in England (reg. no. 986729).  Registered office:
Old Royal Naval College, Park Row, Greenwich, London SE10 9LS.
--------------------------------------------------------------------