From: Konrad Becker via nettime Date: November 95 http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/zkp/escapism.txt EXPANDED E~SCAPISM Konrad Becker Spell checking The iconography of the old media-underground has become mainstream, selling softdrinks and jeans, using artist as test- pilots for the newer media and as suppliers of public relation and digital manipulation. Subversive strategies dealing with this phenomenon of ever fas- ter appropriation of artistic expression by corporate business choose tactical invisibility and immersion in the age of biocy- bernetic self-reproduction. The flooding of signals in cold channels of old media escapes the creative act of the artistic intervention through the recom- bination of signs out of the pink noise of the semiotic ghosts in search of a body. The nets used by cultural activists as meta-data tools according to a new artistic tradition of inspi- red interpretation of data within a panopticum of commodified worldviews. Guerrilla semiotics replacing pretentious artistic creation with recombinant cultural synthesis of the techno- voodoo memetic environment. full e~facts Political theories always relied on historic facts which can be- come dull and questionable with the advance of time and re- search. Hardly any facts can be truly verified anyway - so who cares. The only fairly secure facts: birth and death, (with "-" in between) produce a shift of interest from facts to effects. Furthermore the assumption of solidarity of the working class seems a hilarious misconception. The association with a class of workers is the choice of loosers. Human pleasure seeking orga- nisms, born to have fun, carry the risk of permanent brainstroke in an environment where "enjoying yourself" is a political risk. The way out of materialism has to be looked for in hedonism. Anyone can easily agree on feeling well, a global language. Zero Work ethics in full e~fact towards the international united he- donistic diversification. towards critical hedonism The change towards an immaterialization of goods: electromagne- tic pulses driving the global banking networks and media-satel- lites. A change from body-work to attention span management. Not the inclination for poetry but the compulsion for complexity re- duction spiralizes the information management into the occult while the mesh of media creates black holes of attention and sells it off to the wormholes of the commodified supermarket. Transactions and exchange independently leading to the desub- stantiation of the economic process through immanent conversion of values. "The Economy of Aufmerksamkeit" : building attrac- tors, dark stars as social sculptures, mindfocus in telematic flesh, with habits as expensive and sophisticated as tribal African village fetishes. Is the transformation of the economic competition into a battle for attention a hidden blessing in the powerstructure of the so- cial organism? tactical synrealism A constantly different picture, but allways the same. The choice of pain in the multiple choice emotional drama-trauma and an in- formational waste disposal problem. Phase-locked equilibrated paralyzed presence, strange medial washing detergents in the "immaculate conception": brainwashtaboo. Breaking control circuits of affirmation and diversion, the standard solutions selected by the symbol-committee. Storing and retrieving of complex cognitive material in a hierarchical structure in which the information embedded in higher stages remains available in less differentiated states, but not re- verse. Artificial environments, menu-control symbolic orienta- tion systems, watertight pasture for pattern-processing orga- nisms, the menu-card beyond. Data cooked behind predefined win- dows, where interaction is easy. who is who anonymous Subjective science and meta-iconoclastic guerrilla in an al- liance with intelligent machines projecting multidimensional transhuman reality. Feeling machines, to learn from their self- centered graceful existence - as the barbarians drew their po- wers from their totem animals. Virtuosity and distribution chal- lenged by a diffusion of computer and expert systems. Urban ghostdance in the synagoga satanica of tarantismus technicus, mesmerizing the dataflux in immediatism. Smarter then "artificial intelligence"- more than merely ratio- nal and= faster than light, developing and enhancing the human side of intelligence as a weapon against information warfare ma- chines. e~scapism Limited depth perception of relational proportions, perspective, allows for special effects illusions in the social group. Worldmaps, the tool of power politics and military intelligence, project proportional distortions of n-dimensional space onto the plane for propaganda purposes. The ways of life are marked by representational systems, highly effective inducers with enfor- ced non-representation of profits. To know which way the wind is blowing, look at the center-of-the world: Seamless parquetry and non-local tiling of the imaginary space as a telematic menetekel for scotomic visualization. Escape artists and hedonic engineering for an anxiously bored society. An extended ladder being one technical execution of Jacobs Ladder, the functional principle visualized in the inter- national symbol for emergency ladder. The space between this lattice fence becomes footsteps for escape, a projected vision. Not just up and down, left or right: ana or kata as proposed by the hyperspace pioneers. In hyper-contextuality the stand point changes into a line, opi- nion into a question of style as everything is connected in the hyperspace-design of the biomass. Expanding the personal re- sonance with non-finite resources. Recombining the children of the synvolution, transcoding synlo- gistic permaflux to escape from the vicious circle of coded pro- jections and perceptions towards a nondeterministic hyperspace. PUBLIC NETBASE=20 http://www.t0.or.at Konrad Becker becker@t0.or.at Institute for New Culture-Technologies Museumsquartier Vienna, Austria Fon: ++ 43-1-522 18 34 Fax + Fon: ++ 43-1-504 43 84 * Art in the Age of Biocybernetic Self-Reproduction * --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@is.in-berlin.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@is.in-berlin.de