BIO
Curt Cloninger is an artist, writer, and Associate Professor of New Media at the University of North Carolina Asheville. His art undermines language as a system of meaning in order to reveal it as an embodied force in the world. His art work has been featured in the New York Times and at festivals and galleries from Korea to Brazil. Exhibition venues include Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Granoff Center for The Creative Arts (Brown University), Digital Art Museum [DAM] (Berlin), Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (Chicago), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, and the internet. He is the recipient of several grants and awards, including commissions for the creation of new artwork from the National Endowment for the Arts (via Turbulence.org) and Austin Peay State University's Terminal Award.
Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of eight books, most recently One Per Year (Link Editions). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.
Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of eight books, most recently One Per Year (Link Editions). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.
On being
I see what you are saying. Nevertheless, phenomenological being has everything to do with humans being in the world, with all the necessarily particular, contingent nuances that are implied. The whole Heideggerean project is precisely and actively opposed to the kind of logical, ontological reduction you are (playfully) attempting. Heidegger's philosophy seeks the "destruktion" of your machine.
Then there are post-human philosophers like Donna Haraway and even Deleuze who consider being from alter-human perspectives. I think one of the problems that you will encounter in your project is that a computer is also a thing in the world. When a computer program exists in a computer, it doesn't exist in a metaphysically removed no-man's-lab; it also exists in the world.
I haven't brought up Artificial Intelligence (or more accurately, Artificial Being) because I understand your project as a tongue-in-cheeck absurd model that has more to do with the poetry of programming than with "artificial being" per se. But if you are going to be rigorous about it (as all great failures should be), at some point you will have to account for the inherent irreducibility of phenomenological being to any ontological model whatsoever. Mez eludes this conundrum via poetry (with a wry critique of the cartesian subject thrown in for good measure). But your challenge is to make something that runs. Can executable code be good poetry?
Like I say, an interesting project.
pall wrote:
"The idea is to get at the notion of "being" as it relates to a computer program existing in a computer as opposed to a computer program that thinks it's a human existing in the Universe.
Then there are post-human philosophers like Donna Haraway and even Deleuze who consider being from alter-human perspectives. I think one of the problems that you will encounter in your project is that a computer is also a thing in the world. When a computer program exists in a computer, it doesn't exist in a metaphysically removed no-man's-lab; it also exists in the world.
I haven't brought up Artificial Intelligence (or more accurately, Artificial Being) because I understand your project as a tongue-in-cheeck absurd model that has more to do with the poetry of programming than with "artificial being" per se. But if you are going to be rigorous about it (as all great failures should be), at some point you will have to account for the inherent irreducibility of phenomenological being to any ontological model whatsoever. Mez eludes this conundrum via poetry (with a wry critique of the cartesian subject thrown in for good measure). But your challenge is to make something that runs. Can executable code be good poetry?
Like I say, an interesting project.
pall wrote:
"The idea is to get at the notion of "being" as it relates to a computer program existing in a computer as opposed to a computer program that thinks it's a human existing in the Universe.
On being
Hi Pall,
Yes, Heideggerean dasein involves the situating of humans within a larger horizon of being (rocks, hammers, cows, milk, etc.) But Heidegger makes a distinction between two different ways a human can relate to this network of relationships. To a human, a given object can be either "vorhanden" (present-at-hand) or "zuhanden" (ready-to-hand). presence-at-hand is a kind of awareness of the isolated object from a classical philosophical analytic perspective, or worse yet, from a reductive scientific perspective. How big is the table? What are its dimensions? How do I feel about it? Am I thinking? Do I exist? To Heidegger, this is a frozen, forced, artificial kind of awareness that doesn't really have anything to do with dasein (human-beingness), although it is has been historically confused with human-beingness. On the other hand (pun intended), readiness-to-hand is a kind "being" where you simply reach for the hammer and it is there and you use it and you don't stop to analyze your relationship with the hammer and with the world, you just "are" in those relationships.
Your version 0.13 seems to be modeling a kind of present-at-hand analytical self-awareness that is not yet Heideggerean dasein.
To Heidegger, being has something to do with the real world and immediate, ordinary living. Once you abstract it, model it, and virtualize it, it becomes something other than dasein.
Curt
Yes, Heideggerean dasein involves the situating of humans within a larger horizon of being (rocks, hammers, cows, milk, etc.) But Heidegger makes a distinction between two different ways a human can relate to this network of relationships. To a human, a given object can be either "vorhanden" (present-at-hand) or "zuhanden" (ready-to-hand). presence-at-hand is a kind of awareness of the isolated object from a classical philosophical analytic perspective, or worse yet, from a reductive scientific perspective. How big is the table? What are its dimensions? How do I feel about it? Am I thinking? Do I exist? To Heidegger, this is a frozen, forced, artificial kind of awareness that doesn't really have anything to do with dasein (human-beingness), although it is has been historically confused with human-beingness. On the other hand (pun intended), readiness-to-hand is a kind "being" where you simply reach for the hammer and it is there and you use it and you don't stop to analyze your relationship with the hammer and with the world, you just "are" in those relationships.
Your version 0.13 seems to be modeling a kind of present-at-hand analytical self-awareness that is not yet Heideggerean dasein.
To Heidegger, being has something to do with the real world and immediate, ordinary living. Once you abstract it, model it, and virtualize it, it becomes something other than dasein.
Curt
On being
Hi Pall,
I'll try to clarify by rephrasing. I originally said:
"The fact that you as programmer are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence."
I could have said:
"The fact that one (not you but anyone) as a creator (not just programmer, but artist, or simply the initiator of the project) are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence.
The program can only begin to run once it exists, and it can only exist once someone writes it. So there must always be some transcendent force outside of the existence of the program required for its immanent existence. This is not a proper model of Deleuzean being; to Deleuze everything is pure immanence. Which is fine. I'm just making the observation.
My own conception of being is probably closest to Jean-Luc Marion's, who begins with Heidegger and adds the idea of "givennness" or "donation." Being is given. cf: Marion's "Being Given" and "God Without Being," and Heidegger's "Being and Time." If this kind of being ("saturated phenomena") were ever reducible to a model, it wouldn't be being. It might perhaps be a caricature of being.
Curt
I'll try to clarify by rephrasing. I originally said:
"The fact that you as programmer are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence."
I could have said:
"The fact that one (not you but anyone) as a creator (not just programmer, but artist, or simply the initiator of the project) are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence.
The program can only begin to run once it exists, and it can only exist once someone writes it. So there must always be some transcendent force outside of the existence of the program required for its immanent existence. This is not a proper model of Deleuzean being; to Deleuze everything is pure immanence. Which is fine. I'm just making the observation.
My own conception of being is probably closest to Jean-Luc Marion's, who begins with Heidegger and adds the idea of "givennness" or "donation." Being is given. cf: Marion's "Being Given" and "God Without Being," and Heidegger's "Being and Time." If this kind of being ("saturated phenomena") were ever reducible to a model, it wouldn't be being. It might perhaps be a caricature of being.
Curt
On being
But the programs are doing at least one thing: running. I compile and execute, therefore I am.
As code transcribed in these posts, they are descriptions of models of being. As running binary programs, they are models of being. I don't think they ever get around to performing the act of being, but that's according to my conception of being.
Pall wrote:
"These programs suggest that a computer program is capable of transcending this by being without doing anything."
As code transcribed in these posts, they are descriptions of models of being. As running binary programs, they are models of being. I don't think they ever get around to performing the act of being, but that's according to my conception of being.
Pall wrote:
"These programs suggest that a computer program is capable of transcending this by being without doing anything."
On being
Hi Pall,
Mine is more of a philosophical comment, but it seems like you're approach favors a kind of reductivist Cartesian goal. It would be interesting to see the code for Heideggerean Dasein, for what Graham Harman calls "tool-being," for a Deleuzean conception of subjective being as merely the habit of saying "I." In other words, multiple programs for multiple philosophical conceptions of being.
Also, I wonder if being ports without getting modulated. To write a program for being in pseudocode would be to embrace a kind of Platonic, metaphysical conception of being. Then each specific programming language would be more or less particularly suitable for describing one or another conception of being (actionScript for a pragmatic model, lingo for a semiotic model, javaScript for a limited/deterministic model, etc). The fact that you as programmer are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence. A purely immanent program for being would perpetually write itself. The fact that you think being can be abstracted and modeled inescapably presumes some sort of metaphysics.
A provocative project.
Curt
Mine is more of a philosophical comment, but it seems like you're approach favors a kind of reductivist Cartesian goal. It would be interesting to see the code for Heideggerean Dasein, for what Graham Harman calls "tool-being," for a Deleuzean conception of subjective being as merely the habit of saying "I." In other words, multiple programs for multiple philosophical conceptions of being.
Also, I wonder if being ports without getting modulated. To write a program for being in pseudocode would be to embrace a kind of Platonic, metaphysical conception of being. Then each specific programming language would be more or less particularly suitable for describing one or another conception of being (actionScript for a pragmatic model, lingo for a semiotic model, javaScript for a limited/deterministic model, etc). The fact that you as programmer are always the one writing the program inescapably presumes some sort of transcendence. A purely immanent program for being would perpetually write itself. The fact that you think being can be abstracted and modeled inescapably presumes some sort of metaphysics.
A provocative project.
Curt