“Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.”

- Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

What are artists to gain from taking a PhD? How does the mantle of ‘artistic research’ enable art objects and those invested in them? And where does art’s autonomy reside when its criticality comes from within an academic institution?

Over the last 20 years art has eased its way into academia. Past the door of the artist’s studio and… ]]> Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:58:04 -0700 http://www.fuel.rca.ac.uk/articles/thoughts-on-art-practice-phds http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/and-there-it-is

The hatches have been nailed shut, the creak of a rusty armature silenced with globdules of lubricant. And There It Was, the website; the event, stuttered into life.

UPDATE: The event took place on Thursday 23rd of June 2011 at Chisenhale Gallery. Photos from the event can be found here:

We start from the position of the ‘and’. A neglected conjunction, moulded by the incidents, events or ideas that came before – often just before – its… ]]> Mon, 20 Jun 2011 07:33:57 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/and-there-it-is http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/everything-on-the-face-of-the-earth

This reflection is intended to bind together two recent posts of mine:

• The Doctrine of the Similar (GIF, GIF, GIF)
• Digital Autonomy: A Response to Hito Steyerl

John Carpenter’s 1982 film, The Thing, is a claustrophobic sci-fi masterpiece, containing all the hallmarks of a great horror film. The film depicts a sinister turn for matter, where the chaos of the replicating, cancerous cell is expanded to the human scale and beyond. In The Thing we… ]]> Sun, 12 Jun 2011 10:36:15 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/everything-on-the-face-of-the-earth http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/the-doctrine-of-the-similar-gif-gif-gif

In two short essays – written in 1933 – Walter Benjamin argues that primitive language emerged in magical correspondence with the world. The faculty we all exhibit in childhood play, to impersonate and imitate people and things loses its determining power as language gradually takes over from our “non-sensuous” connection with reality. In a break from Saussurian linguistics, Benjamin decries the loss of this “mimetic faculty”, as it becomes further replaced by the “archive of non-sensuous correspondences” we know as writing.

To put it in simpler terms… Where once we read the world, the stars or the entrails of a… ]]> Wed, 25 May 2011 05:21:34 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/the-doctrine-of-the-similar-gif-gif-gif http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/headless-research

This is an extract from a collaborative text I recently worked on, to be published (soon) in Texte Zur Kunst :

The animal of research, being nourished from its root, springs up from the dirt of discourse, the direction of growth pandering to a supposed head. “Humans see the world through language, but do not see language.” ^[1] What exactly do the bees mean when they pollinate the blossom?

For art meaning tends to be expressed through… ]]> Sun, 15 May 2011 10:26:51 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/headless-research http://machinemachine.net/text/things/overlapping-magisteria

Rare as my blog posts have become, the desire to write – perhaps, the need to write – never wavers. With this in mind I plan to begin using my blog as it was intended: a space for (PhD) research to spill into. What follows then is a mixture of notes, mini-essays and un-finished sections from un-started chapters. I will use the tags on these posts as an archive of potential research pathways. (If you click them you’ll find… ]]> Tue, 26 Apr 2011 08:33:27 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/things/overlapping-magisteria http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium

What is it about a particular media that makes it successful? Drawing a mini history from printing-press smudges to digital compression artefacts this lecture considers the value of error, chance and adaptation in contemporary media. Biological evolution unfolds through error, noise and mistake. Perhaps if we want to maximise the potential of media, of digital text and compressed file formats, we first need to determine their inherent redundancy. Or, more profoundly, to… ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:39:59 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/errors-in-things-and-the-friendly-medium http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/on-text-and-exaptation

(This post was written as a kind of ‘prequel’ to a previous essay, Rancière’s Ignoramus)

‘Text’ originates from the Latin word texere, to weave. A material craft enabled by a human ingenuity for loops, knots and pattern. Whereas a single thread may collapse under its own weight, looped and intertwined threads originate their strength and texture as a network. The textile speaks of repetition and multiplicity, yet it is only once we back away from the tapestry that the larger picture comes into focus.

At an industrial scale textile looms expanded beyond the frame of their human operators. Reducing… ]]> Mon, 06 Dec 2010 14:41:24 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/on-text-and-exaptation http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock

Language is not what it is because it has meaning… It is a fragmented nature, divided against itself and deprived of its original transparency by admixture; it is a secret that carries within itself, though near the surface, the decipherable signs of what it is trying to say. It is at the same time a buried revelation and a revelation that is gradually being restored to ever greater clarity.

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Every Thing has to end, but not so its fragments. Energy flows amongst systems. It constitutes as it destroys, but never does energy… ]]> Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:11:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/the-clock http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/rancieres-ignoramus

Jacques Rancière prepares for us a parable. A student who is illiterate, after living a fulfilled life without text, one day decides to teach herself to read. Luckily she knows a single poem by heart and procures a copy of that poem, presumably from a trusted source, by which to work. By comparing her knowledge, sign by sign, word by word, with the poem she can, Rancière believes, finally piece together a foundational understanding of her language:

“From this ignoramus, spelling out signs, to the scientist who constructs hypotheses, the same intelligence is always at work – an intelligence that… ]]> Mon, 26 Jul 2010 06:43:36 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/rancieres-ignoramus http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/to-crush-a-morlock%E2%80%99s-skull

Although the Time Traveller is an inquisitive type his journey through the ancient museum offers him little insight. The relics are from his future: the arché has all but snapped off from archeology. As he leaves the museum the Time Traveller ponders how best to crush a Morlock’s skull.

The Neanderthal is the most futuristic thing I can think of. Riddled with mythic charm, and soon to have its genes… ]]> Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:42:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/to-crush-a-morlock%E2%80%99s-skull http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/audio-essay-on-pharaohs-cults-and-parasitism

audio essay : On Pharaohs, Cults and Parasitism (The Condition of Division)

Originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM as part of Antepress’ Digestives series, Monday 24th May 2010

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Subscribe: via iTunes

]]> Mon, 24 May 2010 10:29:22 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/out-loud/audio-essay-on-pharaohs-cults-and-parasitism http://hellograndad.com

some text, an image: every day

]]> Wed, 07 Apr 2010 08:27:00 -0700 http://hellograndad.com http://machinemachine.net/text/noise/noise-you-and-your-parents-should-give-a-listen

 

Podcast: 26th March 2010 / theme = You and Your Parents Should Give a Listen

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Subscribe: via iTunes

]]> Sun, 28 Mar 2010 05:41:20 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/noise/noise-you-and-your-parents-should-give-a-listen http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/system-of-enthalpy

Rooted in our language is a bias. It’s a bias that we can hardly be blamed for, based as it is in our conception of ourselves as distinct entities whose existence can be felt, from one moment to the next, through time. Nature appears to move ‘forwards’, the ice-cube melts if left unattended, the scream in the night dissipates into silence.

For very similar reasons we see society as a progressive entity. The 19th Century, Positivist appeal to a human reality that moves towards an ultimate goal still… ]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:46:47 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/system-of-enthalpy http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/raising-neanderthals

In northern Spain 49,000 years ago, 11 Neanderthals were murdered. Their tooth enamel shows that each of them had gone through several periods of severe starvation, a condition their assailants probably shared. Cut marks on the bones indicate the people were butchered with stone tools. About 700 feet inside El Sidrön cave, a research team including Lalueza-Fox excavated 1,700 bones from that cannibalistic feast. Much of what is known about Neanderthal genetics comes from those 11 individuals.

Lalueza-Fox does not plan to sequence the entire genome of the El Sidrön Neanderthals. He is interested in specific genes. “I choose genes… ]]> Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:35:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/ideas/raising-neanderthals