Thanks GH, Curt, and Xtine for getting us started.

Curt's videos are worth a watch and are an excellent starting point for
thinking about how this topic has already been considered.

            GH's work delves deeply and directly into code and performance
practice in gallery and web spaces and all in a very straightforward,
bodily way.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to see his recent show at Transfer
Gallery to experience some of these new works, but I am reminded of his
boxing rants: https://vimeo.com/28518319. These draw a direct relationship
between the performing, working body and performance mediated through code.

            To follow Xtine's challenge to consider pre-web conceptual art
in relation to contemporary work, and just to throw things wide open, as
Curt does after stating that "all normal, human language is (always
already) performative", I would mention George Brecht's event scores.  Ben
Vautier said to George Brecht in an interview (found in *An Introduction to
George Brecht's Book of the Tumbler on Fire)*, "John Cage has made it
possible that everything be music; Marcel Duchamp made it possible for
everything to be an art object; and I think that you make all events art."



In Brecht's 3 Chairs event, the score offered three possibilities:



            *Sitting on a black chair. Occurrence.*

*            Yellow chair. Occurrence.*

*            On (or near) a white chair. Occurrece.*


On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 4:02 AM, Curt Cloninger <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi Victoria and all,
>
> I would like to take the question in a philosophy direction, because
> that's where my interests (most) intersect with the question. But I don't
> want to hijack the discussion, so whoever wants to follow me, feel free.
>
> ////////////////////////
>
> I was glad to see the reference to J.L. Austin via Arns.
>
> So... one can read Barthes' "Death of the Author" and come to the conclusion
> that all normal, linear text is (always already) more or less
> "interactive." So then Hayles' "Print is Flat; Code is Deep" upgrades
> Barthes' print-centric idea of "text," but in the right ways. Because
> Hayles move is *not* to say that what's new about code is that it's
> "interactive" (since linear "text" kind of already was interactive).
>
> So... J.L. Austin says that certain illocutionary language (for example, "I
> now pronounce you man and wife") is performative, and he comes very close
> to saying that all language is performative. And then Derrida
> "deconstructs" Austin in a quite reverent way, by saying that Austin was
> close but didn't quite go far enough, and so Derrida makes the next move
> and pretty much declares all language perforative. (So even the "merely
> declarative" sentence, "I do declare, what a lovely day," is performing all
> sorts of functions depending on its uttered context). And Bakhtin says as
> much when he talks about the utterance. And Wittgenstein says as much when
> he talks about langauge games. So I'm just here to echo those folks and
> posit that all normal, human language is (always already) performative.
>
> So when talking about performative code, the move *can't simply* be that
> what's new about code is that it's "performative" (since human "language"
> kind of already is perforative).
>
> ////////////////////////
>
> So that doesn't answer the question, but hopefully sets up the question to
> be more fruitfully answered?
>
> OBLIQUE LINK FUN TIME!!!
> me on glitch + utterance: http://lab404.com/glitch/
> stephen ramsay livecommenting on livecoding: http://vimeo.com/9790850
> stephen ramsay and geoffrey rockwell talking about writing as programming
> as writing: http://vimeo.com/10039185
>
> Best,
> Curt
>
> Curt Cloninger
> Assistant Professor of New Media
> University of North Carolina Asheville
>
> +++++
> Home: http://lab404.com
> Garden: http://playdamage.org
> Archive:  http://deepyoung.org
> Portfolio: http://lab404.com/art/
> School: http://nm.unca.edu
>
>
> On Mar 3, 2014, at 5:22 AM, Victoria Bradbury wrote:
>
> > *In what ways is performativity expressed in code?*
>



-- 
Victoria Bradbury
[log in to unmask]

PROJECTS
www.victoriabradbury.com

Researcher at CRUMB
www.crumbweb.org

New Media Caucus
Communications Committee
www.newmediacaucus.org