This is an old Real audio radio programme I made.  I’ve been thinking of doing some more work with sound and so dug this out and had a listen and I still find it interesting, so it has an audience of 1 at least ;-)

Blu19 real audio file (right click to save-as)

If anyone can convert it to an MP3 then that would be cool (I don’t have an app on my machine and am not about to buy one just for this one task) - you can upload files to the anonymous FTP server at razorsmile.org if you do happen to convert it…

teaching the machine

There’s this peculiar video that’s on YouTube at the moment, an excellent example of contemporary pedagogy in many ways, called ‘The machine is Us/ing Us’. It’s gathered nearly 2 million hits and since it’s only about 4 minutes long, probably most of those people have watched it. There’s a beautifully slick feel to the way the video performs itself. It’s about the ‘Web 2.0′ (the new ’social web’) and it makes use of the text inputs we make on the ‘net all the time to mix and edit between them, presenting its ideas as the video progresses.

The main thesis seems quite basic, though one that needs to be kept in mind perhaps, and that is that the new forms of communication are not, in fact, communication but connection. They do not allow the easier flow of some pre-existing material but in fact constitute new material, new connections and new flows (even though they also might allow the easier flow of existing material). It seems reasonably positive, reasonably human, reasonably thoughtful. In effect I agree with what Michael Wesch says (the maker of the video and assistant professor of anthropology at Kansas Sate University). I also applaud his skill and ability to produce this piece. There was, however (of course there’ll be a ‘however’ ;-) one phrase that occurred that stuck in my mind and which seemed, how shall I say it, strange. It seemed, at the very least, strange. Read the rest of this entry »

odilon_redon_originofvision

Originally uploaded by razorsmile.

On Wednesday this week (24th Jan) in the MA Seminar I spoke about the role of images within ‘Difference and Repetition’ (DR). They are important because the thought of difference that Deleuze is developing within DR is a ‘difference before identity’ and our thought patterns and culture are so imbued with ‘identity’ thinking that it can be strange to try and think of a primary ontological difference. The beginning of Chapter 1 of DR (Difference in itself) is ripe with a series of images, from the lightning flash, the black indeterminacy as against the white indeterminacy, as well as Goya and Odilon Redon in reference to ‘chiaroscuro’. The image here is from Odilon Redon and is called ‘The origin of vision’. In it I find something of this dark chaotic difference that is the primary ontological category and the ‘individuation’ (coming to be) of an object or organ before it’s integration into any sort of system of organisation that might constitute a ‘full identity’. The single eye and the feathered surroundings that appear like the eyelashes catch a sense of an almost fetishistic vision, one in which we catch sight of things not through a simple appearance but precisely because the thing, our interests and the relations between them constitute an individuation from out of a chaotic set of forces that is difference in itself.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been ill these last few days and aside from musing on set theory, differential calculus and the virtual/actual distinction in Deleuze, have come across a couple of lists of interesting books that I’d like to take a look at. The first, a list from someone I’ve known online for years, is an eclectic and strange list with numerous suggestions that I’ll no doubt follow up in the course of time. I’ll post the list in another entry just after this one.

The other odd list of books derived from a link on ‘Arts and Letters Daily‘, an excellent gathering place of all sorts of strange and wonderful things. It works a little like boingboing, digg, and the like in forming a kind of clearing house for articles around a theme but unlike the others has an agenda that - shall we say - ‘panders to the intelligentisa’. It’s a little knowing and bourgeois but nonetheless an execllent resource.

The link that I followed began with ‘philosophical detective novels…‘ and is a short discussion of a variety of such novels. Aside from the supposed instigator of this genrte - Umberto Eco and his ‘Name of the rose’ - a whole range of other authors, both philosophers and non-philosophers, are mentioned. The ‘Critique of criminal reason’ caught my eye, for example, and I think I may somehow see if I can pass this list around to my family and encourage them to buy some of the books here as their gifts.

The reason the detective novel link caught my eye is because Deleuze, in his introduction to ‘Difference and repetition’, talks about the need to write philosophy in a new way and specifically mentions the detective novel as an exmaple or suggestion as to what exactly this new mode of philosophy would look like. It’s curious, in a sense, that this genre is already developing ‘naturally’ (as it were) and is something that reflects an increasing awareness, perhaps, that one of the main skills philosophy offers is the ability to disentangle threads of reality.

The following came through my email via the nettime list today. The artist in question is not someone I’ve heard of before but someone I will definitely be looking at now. I even had a fleeting thought of trying to get over to see The Helpless Robot.

There’s something fascinating in this type of approach - the way in which White, towards the end of the interview, refuses to be classed as either self-expression art or straightforward science offers some glimpses into the reason for this. Somehow we need to maintain and develop the machines we have developed, that machines that are so intimately related to our nature that we could name ourselves as ‘the machines that now develop us’. Our relation with the machine is intimate and loving, not hostile, even if we might think that the culture we now live in seems to drive machines into the earth a little too fast.

Any odd formatting in the piece is a artifact of the email, as are line breaks. I’m correcting them as I notice them…

Read the rest of this entry »