The entire structure of the Virtual Entity project, and the entire
structure of the digital world, and the whole system of oppositions,
and the fancy PhD?-bubble, the entire whole world seems to be talking about a (fantastic) dualistic composition, that of this and that,
as in Practice and Theory, or Software and Philosophy, or Content and
Form, Junction and Dis-junction, including the semiotic attempt to
learn from the process of connecting the act of making sense in itself
to the symbol as a pre-determined array of strata -out of humanity.
Following this ancestral structure, that of the zeros and ones which we
nowadays find incredibly fulfilling – as if confusing an alphabet with
the spell – this research on virtual life and immaterial consciousness,
this quest on digital filaments and the naturality of manufactures, all
that, which I named Virtual Entity, was nailed and confined to a narrow
vision, that of a software developing itself silently, and
compulsively, while a totally separated theory talks, phantasmatically
walking on another sphere. Yet it was never the case: the development
was in fact a continuous dialog between the two sides, a rhythmic
triggering of doubts, questions and answers transduced from one vertex
to the other. So how to declare definitely obsolete any distinction,
entangling these two dimensions in such a way that, not differently
from the Cartesian representation of x and y on a planar schema, this theoretical software can unfold its entire, 3dimensional constitution?
How do we wander through the marvellous garden of executable logic, if not singing a requiem* for human culture?

(Please read carefully the upcoming releases…)

• requiem: musical service, hymn, or dirge for the repose of the soul of the dead.

 

-written in Athens-

The fake is not always a copy, sometimes the fake is the original.

Milan, June 25th 2009

These are fragments of my notes, translated to English, from Antonio Caronia’s presentation at the Italian Hackmeeting:

The
relation between science and imaginary starts to produce narrative:
science-fiction. This becomes commodity to be consumed, part of the
culture industry. Edgard Allan Poe, Gilles Verne.

Solmi S.;
Fruttero C. – Le meraviglie del possibile. Antologia della
fantascienza. Einaudi. This introduces in Italy an intelligent science
fiction. The development of science and technique in capitalism created
the space for this imaginary.

During ‘900 the sense of ‘possible’
has large space, the idea of ‘future’. Future becomes something you can
build through the possible. Ballard: science fiction is the most
important and specific narrative form of ‘900.

Science Fiction is dead!

The
last scream was cyber-punk: Gibson: first short stories in 1980/82.
Neuromante is from 1984. “The difference engine” by William Gibson and
Bruce Sterling. It is a prime example of the steampunk sub-genre.

Science-fiction
died because late ‘900 capitalism destroyed the idea of future. DILATED
ETERNAL PRESENT! The conception of time has changed. Of
science-fiction, only fragments if imaginary remained, and those became
other genre: fantasy, techno-triller, etc.

Talking of the deads
is important. Science-fiction fertilized imaginary but cannot do it
anymore. Science-fiction cannot be alive again but a recombinant
operation is possible.

Discussion:

tibi: science fiction as a form of critique, to be developed.

xname: narrative structures of this eternal dilated present.

science-fiction
developed a series of stylistic experiments which can be continued and
transformed, and can live within other genre.

new wave anticipates cyber-punk stylistic experiments – > following the line which passes from Mallarme’

‘the atrocity exhibition’ -→ fragmentation of space and capitalization of the earth. time is not yet terminally commercialised

internet achieved the commercialisation of time

teoria delle stringhe

Abbot: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Post Fordism => excludes future and projectuality

obaz => the apocalyptic future which we don’t have

this the story of the new science fiction.

processes of imagination, social processes cannibal capitalism the
process is complete the capital absorbs everything, it predicts living
processes and makes them dead things.

horror: the perfect metaphor of capitalism => digesting life and rendering it death, and spiting it as fictitious life.

Marx: overturning processes from within

art today is creating instruments and alternative ways of thinking inside social processes.

main political project and collective work = rebuild the imaginary, whose decay was engendered by capitalism!