x____
[the] xxxxx [reader]
Published by xxxxx in association with OpenMute
Launch 6 October 2006 8.30pm MetaMute, Unit 9, The Whitechapel
Centre, 85
Myrdle Street, London E1 1HQ
xxxxx substance and software
Hal Abelson, Erich Berger, Shu Lea Cheang, Florian Cramer, Yves
Degoyon, Leif Elggren, Simon Ford, Olga Goriunova, Paul Graham,
Graham
Harwood, Stewart Home, Martin Howse, Jonathan Kemp, Friedrich
Kittler,
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Aymeric Mansoux, Bruno Marchal,
Armin
Medosch, Anthony Moore, Peter Norvig, Jeff Prideaux, Thomas de
Quincey, Otto Roessler, socialfiction.org, Gerald J. Sussman,
Julie
Sussman, Oswald Wiener
http://xxxxx.1010.co.uk
xxxx_
xxxxx proposes a radical, new space for artistic exploration,
with
essential contributions from a diverse range of artists,
theorists,
and scientists. Combining intense background material, code
listings,
screenshots, new translation, [the] xxxxx [reader] functions as
both
guide and manifesto for a thought movement which is radically
opposed
to entropic contemporary economies.
xxxxx traces a clear line across eccentric and wide ranging
texts
under the rubric of life coding which can well be contrasted
with the
death drive of cynical economy with roots in rationalism and
enlightenment thought. Such philosophy, world as machine,
informs its
own deadly flipside embedded within language and technology.
xxxxx
totally unpicks this Hiroshimic engraving, offering a dandyish
alternative by way of the deep examination of software and
substance.
Life coding is primarily active, subsuming deprecated
psychogeography
in favour of acute wonderland technology, wary of any assumed
transparency. Texts such as Endonomadology, a transcript from
celebrated biochemist and chaos theory pioneer Otto E. Roessler
who
features heavily throughout this intense volume, make plain the
sadistic nature and active legacy of rationalist thought. At the
same
time, through the science of endophysics, a physics from the
inside
rigorously examined here, a delicate theory of the world as
interface
is proposed.
xxxxx is very much concerned with the joyful elaboration of a
new
real; software-led propositions which are active and
constructive in
eviscerating contemporary culture. xxxxx embeds Perl Routines to
Manipulate London, by way of software artist and Mongrel Graham
Harwood, a Universal Dovetailer in the Lisp programming language
from
AI researcher Bruno Marchal rewriting the universe as code, and
self
explanatory Pornographic Coding from plagiarist and author
Stewart
Home and code art guru Florian Cramer. Software is treated as
magical,
electromystical, contrasting with the tedious GUI desktop
applications
and user-led drudgery expressed within a vast ghost-authored
literature which merely serves to repeat over and again the
demands of
industry and economy. Key texts, which well explain the magic
and
sheer art of programming for the absolute beginner are published
here.
Software subjugation is made plain within the very title of
media
theorist Friedrich Kittler's essay Protected Mode, published in
this
volume. Media, technology and destruction are further elaborated
across the work in texts such as War.pl, Media and Drugs in
Pynchon's
Second World War, again from Kittler, and Simon Ford's elegant
take on
J.G Ballard's crashed cars exhibition of 1970, A Psychopathic
Hymn.
Software and its expansion stand in obvious relation to
language. Attacking transparency means examining the prison cell
or
virus of language; life coding as William S. Burrough's style
cutup or
riot playback (Stewart Home). And perhaps the most substantial
and
thorough-going examination is put forward by daring Vienna
actionist
Oswald Wiener in his Notes on the Concept of the Bio-adapter
which has
been thankfully unearthed here. Equally, Olga Goriunova's
extensive
examination of a new Russian literary trend, the online male
literature of udaff.com provides both a reexamination of culture
and
language, and an example of the diversity of xxxxx; a diversity
well
reflected in background texts ranging across subjects such as
Leibniz'
monadology, the ur-crash of supreme flaneur Thomas de Quincey
and
several rewritings of the forensic model of Jack the Ripper
thanks to
Stewart Home and Martin Howse.
xxxxx liberates software from the machinic, and questions the
transparency of language, proposing a new world view, a sheer
electromysticism which is well explained with reference to the
works
of Thomas Pynchon in Friedrich Kittler's essay, translated for
the
first time into English, which closes xxxxx.
http://xxxxx.1010.co.uk
http://openmute.org
All press/review/sales enquiries please address to m@1010.co.uk
Launch directions:
>From Aldgate East tube head down Commercial Road and further
left into
Myrdle Street.
>From Whitechapel station turn left out of station, left again
into New
Road and then right down Commercial Road until Myrdle Street.
Buses 205, 25, 254 and D3 run nearby
Map: http://tinyurl.com/jny5v
apologies for x_____ posting
mail m@1010.co.uk to be removed from the xxxxx list
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