<nettime> gappy digest 2 [eyescratch|hwang]

["nettime's_street_historian" <nettime@bbs.thing.net>]

Re: <nettime> gappy digest [spooky|marston|spooky|spooky]
     eyescratch <eyescratch@terminal.cz>
     Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>

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Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:39:54 -0500
Subject: Re: <nettime> gappy digest [spooky|marston|spooky|spooky]
From: eyescratch <eyescratch@terminal.cz>

On Tuesday, February 25, 2003, at 11:39  PM, nettime's_gasoholic wrote:

> I mentioned steganography, ciphaz, and a whole bunch of other
> stuff... so many people have written about identity and whatnot
> on-line, the thing I'm pointing out is when that stuff migrates
> off-line, and comes back as a kind of constant, timeless carnival -
> in a world post the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, history is a
> carnival-o-meanings (that's about the only thing thatI can think of
> as real when I see Bush on TV), a pageant without center, save for
> the illusion of what was once the United States before it caught up
> with Russia and just decided to get rid of the burden of goverance
> and just let the oligarch's do their thing... there's a great video
> remix of Bush's state of the union speech at www.fuckitall.com/bsh


I liked the carnival in Kreuzberg better before the wall went down. it  
seems there were people swappin' over to east Berlin havin' mad throw  
downs just before it did come down. that's the word on the street, that  
is. It be the only reason to have an 80's revival. Then came the whole  
skin thing - like they'd been missing out. Finally the Love parade  
swept everyone off their arse, and then the Fuck Parade paraded us to  
noise.


> that gives you  a surface idea of the "culture jammer" scenario (not
> the dumb Mark Dery resonance, but more like 2manydj's or the gurella
> news network's remix of Emminem's song "White America", or Trent Lott
> saying those dumb comments about the 1948 states rights elections -
> all are mistakes, fractures in the perceptual terrain - remixes).


Wow. Can we have a long conversation about remixes versus mistakes?


> pattern recogntion, uncut funk - the new streets have spoken - and
> its in code.... dig the cipha, check the flow.I guess it's like
> Ishmael Reed would say, mumbo jumbo become jumbo mumbo - the mumbo
> become extra-large...
> think out-side the box, join the revolution choose adifferent
> brand... wander the arcades of a dofferent era in wonder at the
> complexity of itall. Press "play."  Enjoy adifferent mathematics of
> the new world out of time... download into a different cipha... the
> people are restive in the heart of darkness... the 4th world has
> artists of the floating world... it's a conflict of interest from a
> failed client state, a "material breach" of a voided contract...
> snactions from the 5th column decreeing null and void all previous
> illusions.
>
> pax,
>
> Paul
>
>> DJ Spooky - WHAT are you talking about???
>  <...>
>


Again, the what slaps up to the jagged rock. But seriously, choosing a  
different brand only has you going in circles. Now, making a brand,  
that is something else. That "what" is still there.


> ======================================================================= 
> =====
> "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe
> they are free...."
> Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Do you subscribe to his color theory too? Or are you just  
playingTempest that way?


> Second, I wanted to point out the interesting point that Spooky (being  you,
> not the character of your upcoming novel) was an organ of the GAP campaign
> -- or as you like to put it, the global vernacular of GAP Inc. -- here  in
> New York City. I'm not saying it compromises your ability to comment with
> any depth, as there are many cult studs that are busy deciphering the
> semilogical and linguisic markers of advertising. But to me, that is just
> 'mad boring'. Its the surface. The spectacle. The depthless sheen of
> unreality. Kinda like your comments. The real language is in finance and
> economics, not hidden in the models bra.


There is an economic invester though, who swears by what he gleens from  
the New York Times Review of Books Best Seller List.

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Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 10:53:26 +0100
Subject: Re: <nettime> gappy digest [spooky|marston|spooky|spooky]
From: Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>

Paul Miller wrote:

> In a world where values
> are relative, the uniform language of advertising creates pattern
> recognition across geographic boundaries (thus the reference to
> Gibson's new novel, and it's intriguing involution of advertising...
> think rhizomatic...), but yeah, when this stuff is part and parcel of
> the basic way visual information flows in an information economy.
> Advertising just bypasses the normal boundaries that slow down
> information as it passes from one culture to another, you know, kind
> of like when the immune system is bypassed by various viruses...
> "viral marketing" Norman Mailer's "Advertising for Myself," dude...
> it's the taste of now. Carnival is about when you're in a theater of
> highly structured roles being transformed by their environment, check
> in with Brazil, or Jamaica etc etc Or even parts of Italy, France,
> Spain etc etc the scenario is about lifestyle become pattern... it's
> that post-catholic thing..,. the protestant scene digs the gutenberg
> galaxy, but can't flow with the intergalactic funk of the
> meta-tron... there's no "surfeit of imagination" here just
> transformation of ritual process... Bakhtin meets Grand Master Flash
> meets Linus Torvalds... dig? check the coordinates on the autopilot,
> download the map, it's a psychogeography of a vanished world, a
> krushed groove...

This isn't necessarily new. It worked well for the Catholic Church for 
centuries well before that. Even in the last century, I remember a 
family friend, a Korean Catholic deacon working in Minneapolis, telling 
me how part of his work was to integrate Native American rites with 
monotheism, apparently not remembering or caring about what happened 
when Korean folk animism was absorbed the same way.

When people communicate and mediate meaning, they often leave artifacts 
behind. Those artifacts get reabsorbed in different contexts. 
Contemporary globalization accelerates this dynamic, but I don't know 
that it fundamentally changes it, unless you believe that speed is 
basically an transforming principle in of itself. The Nike Swoosh 
replaces the crucifix, but the same groping for illumination or release 
is always present.

Francis

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