 pressed computer, Andrea Cruz, Zürich 2002 |
hard- and
software critique group experiment projecthandbook Margarete Jahrmann/Max Moswitzer 2002/03, formats: open seminar, hardware hacker workshop, communication/discourse on mailinglist, geeklog Artcoded works on the recombination and revalorisation of redundant technologies we call it hardwarehacker or slave&master projects. Every reconfiguration is documented as a experiment report in the style of doityourself nerd sites. The way of accessing a black box is described as manual for others. |
Hardware Kritik und Visual Code-Games
Im Slave und Master Projekt geht es um den Prozess des Konstruierens einer gemeinsamen Maschine als
Versuchsanordnung. Slave und Master steht als technologischer Begriff für Rechner-Architekturen, der als Netzwerk-Verschaltungskonzept mit dem Terminus Engine, also Maschine erweitert wird. In Engine steckt neben dem Maschinischen, das die Thematik des Projektes darstellt, auch noch die theoretische und konzeptuelle Maschine bis hin zur algorithmischen Game (Software) Engine. Spiel-Bedingung ist, dass die Hardware mit anderer Hardware kommuniziert und von aussen und innen, interne und externe visuelle Transparenz aufweist. Der Handshake von Science Visualisation, Knowledge Design und Scrap Hardware kann erfolgen. Free DOS, Brutal Ware, LOAF (Linux on a Floppy), kurz minimale Betriebssysteme bilden die Basis für die Konstruktion eines lokalen Netzwerks aus selbstzerlegter „scrap“, also wertloser redundanter alter Hardware.
Phase 1 - Scrap
Check: sozialer Hack, Organisieren
von Scrap=Müll Hardware
Phase 2 - Konstruieren eines recombinant Scrap-Engines
Phase 3 - Auswerten und Analysieren der Ergebnisse der running Engine
Phase 4 - Rückkoppeln der Ergebnisse. Weiteres Verändern und Adaptiere
Phase 2 - Konstruieren eines recombinant Scrap-Engines
Phase 3 - Auswerten und Analysieren der Ergebnisse der running Engine
Phase 4 - Rückkoppeln der Ergebnisse. Weiteres Verändern und Adaptiere
LEDgarden: Shusha Niederberger
requiem for a machine: Iris Kern
helios: Thomas Enzi
bamboolab - hannah: Michal Wlodkowski
scribbles: Pablo Naranjo
shadowerk: Ella Krampl
Max Moswitzer, Hardwarehacker/ Crazy Engines
claudia's rick tests: Maria Claudia De Azevedo Borges
machineX: Nick Koning
heat exchange: Todd Matsumoto
slave/master fan: Wijbrand Stet
Please Don't Debug: christoph burgdorfer
Master Board: cindy aebischer
free frequencies: marco klingmann
Token Ring: mascha leummens
486 trash concert: roger wigger
Packet Radio: thomas comiotto & nico dreher
Black Box: andrea del carmen cruz gonzales
The wilful obstinacy of man - the wilful obstinacy of machines
by Giaco Schiesser, Head Department Media & Art, University of Art and Design Zurich
In german there is a most beautiful and powerful word that does not exist in other languagues. A word that deserves to be worked out even a lot more for cultural and political purposes. It is called Eigensinn or Eigensinnigkeit (approximately: wilful obstinacy). The word appears first with an emphasis in a fairy tale (Das eigensinnige Kind, the obstinate child), by the well known Grimm brothers whom collected and published a wide range of german fairy tales in the first half of the 19th century under the title of “Grimms Märchen”. This collection became very famous and has since been part of every library of germanspeaking housholds up to now. A hundered years later, it was taken up, enlarged and transformed to a concept by the famous German filmmaker, author and theorist Alexander Kluge, especially in his book “Geschichte und Eigensinn” (1982/1990/2002), of which, unfortunally, there is no english translation.
The concept stresses the fact, that each individual has his or her own way of living his or her everyday life, not only by fulfilling a given (economic) structure (which was the idea of Adorno and the still very influentual Frankfurt School), but also by pursuing their own targets by depending on an own (i.e. eigensinnigen) surprising, strange, obstinate attitudue to undergo, subvert, melt, traverse the things that the indivuduals are expeceted to do economically, politcally, culturally.
For Kluge this Eigensinnigkeit is the crucial point for each political or cultural project to start with. The Eigensinnigkeit of the subjects (which has lots in common with Gramscis ‘bon sens’) where all developping of individual and collective empowerment is rooted und enables people to live their lifes in a more democratic, selfdetermined way. It’s their peculiarity, their sometimes bizarre and often contradictionary will to do what they want to do under whatever circumstances, their selfdetermined actions, their beliefs and obstinacies that describes their Eigensinnigkeit best. As I suggested earlier, Kluges concept can be transformed und be used to get a better understanding of all forms of art and media: Photography, Film, Fine Arts, literature et cetera. Each of these forms of art has its wilful obstinacy, materiality, its structure, potentiality and restrictions which makes all of them unique and irreplaceable - it’s the content ande the articulation of these criterias which form the Eigensinnigkeit of a media. For all of them there has been a wide range of esthetics, developed over centuries, in some cases, only within a couple of years, in others. You may well know that the Eigensinnigkeit of the language plays a crucial role for literature (think of what writers from Saussure to Lacan taught us about language), or that the material of the movies (a piece of photosensitive film that has to be developed) has its Eigensinnigkeit, to be experimented or probed with (think of the 1st and 2nd French Avantgarde f.e.).
This holds true for <media art>, too (a concept which has to be critizised heavily by the way, because each art is media art). The media of <media art> are computers and networks: algorithms, codes, the digital or whatever concept you may use for it. We call it the machinic. There is an Eigensinnigkeit (wilful obstinacy) of the machinic and in my input we well discuss some aspects of that Eigensinnigkeit to get a better understanding for the experimental setup, its observation, the reflection of it and the future dealing with computer and networks as media and not only as a tool. A crucial moment for every art school nowadays is: to experiment with, to try and find out the possibilites of digital esthetics by working with and through the Eigensinn of the machinic, because the society we have been started to live in is a digital one (if you call it information society, digital capitalism, digital age, knowledge society dos not matter). And still we are at the very beginning of finding out what are the potentialities, obstinacies and the restrictions of computers and networks as media. There are a lot of things to find out, we have just started.