I function on tangents. i am curious about the 'reversibility' of our
new knowledge. or our re-occurring fear of differences - individual
agency not as conflict but informing range of choice.
I'd like to send you to this interesting project called Manahatta. http://themannahattaproject.org/
It was done by an ecologist, poetically and ironically 'recreating'
the natural 400 years ago, so we can contemplate the natural today in
Manhattan.
What is most intriguing about this for me, is the idea, that every
building in Manhattan will be rebuilt 2 times in the next 400 years...
so how might we 'plan' what Manhattan might look like in 400 years.
What is historical democracy, infrastructure endowment, acculturation
of what is, what was, and what is possible - and then most difficult,
what do we want to implement for the future when we ourselves are dead
constituents? Manhattan went from 'pristine' beaver-ridden jungle to
a concrete jungle in 400 years. What might we imagine it to be
later? Perhaps, looking abstractly at say the collective action on
the Manhattan landscape, we can think about the face, the skin, the
mentality of our cyborg(s). Isn't the cyborg fundamentally a platform
to explore our hopes and fears for the future, and fundamentally about
losing/gaining control of our diverse humanity? yet again, losing/
gaining control of our environment.
on the flip side, how we navigate the multiple preferences, realities,
dreams and wishes -- i love this work by komar and melamid - America's
Most Wanted paintings... democratically solicited surveys of what
people favored in paintings - and then a depiction of what a
democratically created painting might look like... it's a humorous
play on the democracy of aesthetics... http://www.diacenter.org/km/intro.html
. sometimes agreement is the thing i want least.
a frog and 5 freckles for all the opinions that keep our thoughts vital.
j
On Jul 29, 2009, at 5:40 PM, roger malina wrote:
> Dear Yasminers
>
> We have a couple of days left for our Ethnic Cyborg discussion
> which obviously will be pursued at the Amber Festival in Istanbul.
>
> In re reading the many posts, I am struck at the divergent 'world
> views'
> that are being debated about the future of life on our planet, and the
> role of humans. Maybe 'ethnicity' was not the right qualifier= but I
> do
> think we often assume that we all share underlying world views or
> value systems ( which often can be encapsulated as cultural or ethnic
> differences). In spite of increasing connectivity on the planet, I
> think
> we need to be careful not to assume that we really do share the same
> world views and that its important to identify the common ground and
> the
> areas of dispute.
>
> The discussion about the role of artist programmers is clearly
> relevant,
> because one role of artists and indeed scientist/engineers in this
> area
> is to testbed real scenarios and ideas. If one looks at the
> development
> of all technologies, and now biotechnologies, the development is not
> a linear predictable one ( in spite of government strategic
> planning). Power
> to the imagination !!
>
> I do think that Haraways analysis, and many such thinking, needs to
> be recast as we face the reality that the kind of life that has
> developed
> on our planet is unsustainable, and that anthropogenic change is now
> a dominant source of environmental constraint, and that to a large
> extent
> we are now intervening in our own evolution.
>
> We do not have a discussion topic planned right now for August for
> YASMIN=
> so we could try what we did before= if anyone on the list would like
> to propose
> a discussion topic for a week, we can see if there is response /
> interest. If you
> would like to propose a one week topic drop me an email at rmalina@alum.mit.edu
>
> Roger
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