[NetBehaviour] a new Microcode: Vito Acconci's 'Seedbed'

[Alan Sondheim]

And of course it's valid; I actually don't think 'validity' is a 
reasonable category in aesthetics - it can be defined in terms of social 
groups or language games, but has nothing intrinsic about it. Another 
interesting point - Seedbed could be 'directly' experienced, even without 
reading the wall-text, but your work requires a knowledge of a specific 
computer language. So the program can be translated one to another; I 
don't see Seedbed itself translating, which is why I have fairly negative 
feelings about 'recreation' art, especially in Second Life...

- Alan


On Mon, 6 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:

> Well, actually the perl code:
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl
> $p = `Seedbed`;
>
> would run without error. $p would contain the "not found" error. But I
> don't feel that it does much in pointing out the significance of the
> medium in this particular case. Perhaps if the work was about
> something lost or nonexistent, it would work but not for the "Seedbed"
> piece. The title of each of these Microcodes is as much a part of the
> complete work as anything else. The direct reference by name has
> already been made in the title and therefore I don't see any
> meaningful reason to reference it again in this way. Someone might
> say, "But you did it in 'Sleep'." However, I don't see that as the
> same thing because 'sleep' is an actual Perl function.
>
> If you want to attempt a phenomenological examination of the reference
> itself, let me explain exactly what led to the creation of this
> Microcode. I was doing some work the other day where I had to use the
> "touch" command legitimately. This reminded me of James Morris'
> "Microcrudities" where he used the command along with the variable
> "myself". This reminded me of my code piece "exist.pl" from last year
> where a perl code referenced itself in various human ways, i.e.
> my_existence, my_experience, my_environment, etc. When I thought of a
> Perl script referencing itself as the location of the actual file and
> then 'touching' that file, it reminded me of "Seedbed". And so I
> created the script that locates 'itself', that is, the file containing
> the runnable code and then 'touches' the file. I decided to print the
> long listing of the file each time to show the effects of 'touching'
> the file (the creation date is updated each time) as a hint that this
> sort of 'touching' is very different than Acconci's 'touching'. Of
> course, more people are going to understand the referenced meaning
> than the real meaning. But does that make it any less valid? Now that
> I think about it, the work isn't about Acconci's "Seedbed" at all.
> It's much more about the intended and almost inevitable
> misunderstanding.
>
> best r.
> Pall
>
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 11:08 PM, Alan Sondheim<sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I agree with you here, and as usual a couple of points.
>> If k:> Seedbed
>> doesn't run, can it be said to run as not-run? This isn't trivial; Max
>> Black discussed it in terms of defining blackbirds as not-this, not-that;
>> obviously the list is infinite. Certainly 'Seedbed' as a command tells us
>> something - that the only thing it will run is the generic not-found - but
>> that's something.
>> I do understand the non-issue of reproduction of other work in micro-code,
>> and as you say, Seedbed is referenced; what I was on about, was what sort
>> of reference? There's a whole phenomenology here of course, which might or
>> might not be of interest.
>> - Alan, and thanks
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>
>>> I think I have to bring things back down to the ground now. After
>>> taking a bit of a break in the country in glorious weather, I see that
>>> this discussion is really going far beyond the work that's being
>>> discussed. Obviously, none of the microcodes that reference other work
>>> (and keep in mind that there only 3 or 4 out 20-some codes that do
>>> this) are meant to be accurate reproductions of those works. Actually,
>>> as reproductions they are meant to fail and in doing so they become
>>> new works of art. "Seedbed" attempts to reference the original
>>> performance with the words "touch myself" and by using the same title.
>>> But the way these words are applied within the code gives them a very
>>> different meaning as code. They also produce a result and it's a
>>> result that has absolutely nothing to do with the non-code meaning of
>>> the works. So these arguments about whether or not the code version
>>> references the original "Seedbed" accurately enough, are entirely
>>> beside the point.
>>>
>>> The reason some of the Microcodes reference older work is to highlight
>>> the differences between the media. To show that while code as a medium
>>> is incapable of reproducing other work created in different media, it
>>> is also a distinct medium of its own that is capable of doing things
>>> that other media can't.
>>>
>>> Your suggestion of "an absolute minimum" wouldn't work as a Microcode
>>> because, as I mentioned earlier, I set a rule for myself, that all of
>>> the codes be runnable. Since, as Alan points out in his post,
>>> "Seedbed" doesn't run as a Unix command, this code wouldn't really be
>>> runnable.
>>>
>>> As mentioned above, the idea is simply to bring the original
>>> performance to mind. No more. Because the medium being used is
>>> incapable of doing more. It's entirely incapable of "bringing it to
>>> life, enacting it, redoing it, reperforming it". At the very most, it
>>> can "suggest it".
>>>
>>> best r.
>>> Pall
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:16 PM, <lotu5 at resist.ca> wrote:
>>>> At the risk of stating the obvious, perhaps the problem here is that there
>>>> is no one essence of this performance, or any performance for that matter.
>>>> While you do say "a single 'essence'", and not "the", to me a major part
>>>> of the very idea of performance is to create something which is in excess
>>>> of language and representation, something which the techne of words or
>>>> photo or video don't capture, much less a few lines of code. While I think
>>>> the notion of translating a performance into code is interesting, perhaps
>>>> what this discussion precisely raises is that there are a multiplicity of
>>>> essences, dirtiness, fantasy, masturbation, soreness, mystery, discomfort,
>>>> the body, the absence of the body... Your microcodes seem to be a sort of
>>>> review or remix of another work, based on your personal interpretation. In
>>>> fact, I think that the reduction of the body to a set of files in your
>>>> home directory is in itself an abjection and a sadness, a departure from
>>>> all the rich, sensual complexity of the body and a reduction to a few
>>>> digital bytes. Perhaps the sadness of the digital is expressed very well
>>>> here.
>>>>
>>>>>> Pall Thayer wrote:I guess by "the essence" of the work, I'm
>>>>>> considering the absolute minimum that it takes to bring to mind
>>>>>> "Seedbed" when looking at the code.
>>>>
>>>> Hmm, but here is sounds like you're talking about a simlpe representation,
>>>> and I think being very reductive! Wouldn't the absolute minimum be
>>>> something like
>>>>
>>>> #!/usr/bin/perl
>>>> $p = `seedbed`;
>>>>
>>>> ? When in fact, the interesting part is to go beyond simply bringing the
>>>> performance to mind, but as the furtherfield review writes, to bring it to
>>>> life, to enact it, to redo it, to reperform it, in the form of an actual
>>>> running program?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On 2/7/2009, "Alan Sondheim" <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> Hi Paul,
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> The essence it seemed to me wasn't self-referentiality or touch
>>>>>>>>>>> (good
>>>>>>>>>>> unix
>>>>>>>>>>> command too), so much as it was about targeting the ab/use/er, as
>>>>>>>>>>> well
>>>>>>>>>>> as
>>>>>>>>>>> dirtiness. And code's always clean; even dirty code's clean, so
>>>>>>>>>>> there's
>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Pall Thayer wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> Hi Alan,
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> One of the primary reasons that I've "redone" a number of known
>>>>>>>>>>>> pieces
>>>>>>>>>>>> by other artists in these Microcodes is more to point out the
>>>>>>>>>>>> difference between code as a medium and other media. So the point
>>>>>>>>>>>> isn't necessarily to emulate the work as closely as possible but
>>>>>>>>>>>> rather to capture a single "essence" of it in very compact code. I
>>>>>>>>>>>> think that trying to work the incline and fantasies into this
>>>>>>>>>>>> "version" of the work would result in considerably more code which
>>>>>>>>>>>> would in turn make the work overly complex.
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> *****************************
>>> Pall Thayer
>>> artist
>>> http://www.this.is/pallit
>>> *****************************
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> NetBehaviour mailing list
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>>> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> -- 
> *****************************
> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://www.this.is/pallit
> *****************************
>
> _______________________________________________
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> NetBehaviour at netbehaviour.org
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>



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