To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction
Date
2009-06-06
Authors
Golding, Johnny
Kennedy, Steve
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture
Abstract
‘To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction’ is a philosophic, political and sensuous journey playing with (and against) Benjamin’s ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. In an age inundated by the ‘post-’: postmodernity, posthuman, post art, postsexual, post-feminist, post-society, post-nation, etc, ‘To Tremble the Zero’ sets out to re/present the nature of what it means to do or make ‘art’, as well as what it means to be or have ‘human/ity’ when the ground is nothing other than the fractal, and algorithmically infinite, combinations of zero and one. The work will address also the unfortunate way in which modern forms of metaphysics continue to creep ‘unsuspectingly’ into our understanding of contemporary media/electronic arts, despite (or perhaps even because of) the attempts by Latour, Badiou, or Agamben especially when addressing the zero/one as if a contradictory ‘binary’ rather than as a kind of ‘slice’ or (to use Deleuze and Guattari) an immanent plane of immanence. This work argues that by retrieving Benjamin, Einstein, Gödel, and Haraway, a rather different story of art can be told.
Description
Keywords
Walter Benjamin, algorithmic reproduction, binary, metaphysics, electronic art, Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (PACTAC)
Citation
Golding, Johnny and Kennedy, Steve. "To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction." Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, Victoria, B.C. Presentation.