Michael Century on Sun, 28 May 2000 21:00:48 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> OFSS01..thread on artists' tools |
On 27 May 2000, Benjamin Geer wrote: > >Perhaps someday someone will make the perfect computer system for artists, >which lets them do everything they want with a minimum of technical >knowledge. Until then, artists will have to live with the fact that >computers are general-purpose tools, like airplanes, and that one must >learn to use them as such. I'd like to look inside this claim, which is hard to understand without some understanding what a "perfect" system could possibly mean. Much discussion on this thread has made clear how rewarding the steep learning curve for so-called general purpose tools can be. That is, enabling the development of personal expressive control, generation of new variations, extending the existing scope of the 'language' or 'grammar' from which one starts. Fine. The next interesting question, though, is where and how to define the performance boundaries of a tool set, the particular sub-devices, strategems, routines, etc., which are 'punctualized' and made reproducible using a reduced set of instructions (I take the term in quotes from the way actor-network theoriests (eg. Callon) talk about innovation). I think tha tinstrumental virtuosity in music performance can be a helpful way to think about this. This is a very old, and perhaps tired analogy, but nonetheless, consider: A violinist playing an Amati violin is unaware of the 'magic' in Amati's craft, or at least, need not have much awareness of this craft in order to perform on the instrument with skill. Application software can in principle (but rarely does) start from this level of refinement. Why not? Michael Century _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold