[Xmca-l] Re: Elaborations on Nissen's Could Life Be...

[Huw Lloyd]

A bit like monkeys smooching, I figure.  Its made up, by design.  I figured
I didn't need to find a real word.

It reminds me of this little piece of art (In Paris with you):
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poet/james-fenton

It seems a very clean expression to me.

Best,
Huw


On 13 February 2015 at 23:27, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> Hi Huw,
>
> You know, I had the exact same experience at an Apple store when I asked
> how should I build a backup system that didn't involve putting my data in a
> cloud someplace owned by Apple? The fellow in the genius t-shirt told me he
> didn't know, but it sure was a good idea.
>
> I am under the distinct impression you are our resident technologist, and
> so I'm glad the dishwasher piece by Cory Doctorow had meaning for you.
>
> I've never heard the word "mookiness" in fact my autocorrect changed the
> word to "moodiness" just now! :)
>
> Talk about smoothing over!
>
> I'm guessing perhaps it is a word something like moodiness but with a "K"
> to sound like "crazy" or "cracked" ?? Please expand on this word for me?
>
> Anyhow, back to the matter at hand: I still am scratching my head to how
> this ties into the chapter on Humboldt? Have you a copy of this chapter
> available?
>
> As far as the absence of art being a fad, it's been a fad that has likely
> been around since the 60s when folk songs and their connection to protests
> were seen as dangerous thinking in operation. Or even farther back, from
> the Beat Generation, that first generation to deeply feel the nausea of
> post-war America.
>
> I welcome your take on this and how you might link this to Nissen's paper
> Life Could Be…, as our resident propellor head who offends Apple store
> managers, but is still welcomed by Starbucks baristas.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Annalisa
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 3:59 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Elaborations on Nissen's Could Life Be...
>
> On 13 February 2015 at 19:56, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:
>
> > Gee whiz, xmcars! my previous post had a lot of typos and I'm sorry for
> > that! Thinking is faster than writing sometimes.
> >
> > Huw,
> >
> > Help me make your connections? I'm not following.
> >
> > I'm not sure what you've posted has to do with aesthetic experiences, the
> > making of art, and the removal  of these experiences and activities from
> > public life. But I hope you'll let me know.
> >
>
> Annalisa,
>
> You mentioned a lack of support for self-sustaining ventures too.
>
> Re the dishwasher-brainwasher piece, actually I think you can see an intent
> to transfer the mentality of vertical design (apple's market) into social
> mannerisms -- a way of speaking that conveys the smoothing away of wrinkles
> (through design, of course).
>
> I personally own some mac products and am pleased with them, but it wasn't
> that mookiness that I was buying into.  When I needed a backup device -- I
> really have no interest or recollection of what name their given -- I
> walked into a local store, up to a guy who was free, who happened to be the
> store manager, and asked for one of their "remote back up kits".  To a
> technical guy this would have been perfectly reasonable, but the person I
> spoke to looked pretty affronted.  Smoothness vanished and instead I got
> waspish comments about where to find it.  On the other hand, whenever I
> venture into a starbucks the staff never seem to mind when I ask for a
> medium (sized) coffee.
>
> Anyway, with respect to the absence of art.  I suspect this is more about
> fashions in the similitude of art.  Which I suppose is equally problematic
> if the fashion is to consider the similitude of art as art.
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
>
>
>
>
> > After posting my thinking about this last night, I remembered how while I
> > was in school, understanding from my own experiences, art was something
> > anyone could learn, like learning history or math or chemistry. Yet it is
> > marginalized even in the school. I don't think I was able to articulate
> > that freely that at the time, because the marginalized artists seem to be
> > the ones who were rewarded for living on the edge, in more ways than one.
> > They would have been wasted words to which no one would have listened.
> >
> > The pressure to have to take on that cloak of marginalization as a young
> > person can be intense, especially if the narrative is: to be considered
> any
> > good, you have to shoot heroin and struggle with your addiction in order
> to
> > make good art.
> >
> > What a great and effective way to systematically eradicate all the young
> > artists in a society. Which controls the narrative as "making art is just
> > breaking plates and putting that on a canvas." It's very different in
> > Europe where artists are more valued members of society, and even loved,
> > and there are means of sponsoring them interwoven into the society in
> > different ways. Albeit not without flaws, but it's better than nothing.
> >
> > In the US there are diminishing contacts with art and aesthetic
> > experiences in public spaces. The incidents for contact go up if you live
> > in places like New York, but typically it's pretty barren. The only
> access
> > for art is in an iPod or a laptop, or a movie theater, or a book or an
> art
> > museum.
> >
> > All of these are mediated spaces that dictate our choices and how we are
> > to experience them. Consider this recent article by Cory Doctorow:
> >
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/if-dishwashers-were-iphones
> >
> > Art as a part of everyday experience seems completely absent and
> > diminishes each day. Unless, of course, I want to interpret sitting in
> > commuter traffic as a kind of performance art of modern living. The only
> > other means for aesthetic experiences is to go out in nature, and that
> can
> > be difficult or at best inconvenient.
> >
> > Artists by their natures are sensitive and independent thinkers, likely
> > because of the way they sense to world. That is not to say that the rest
> of
> > us are insensitive or dependent thinkers, but that they are the first
> > identifiable group of "people like that." If we remove the sensitive
> types
> > and marginalize them, that is one way to remove some of those independent
> > thinkers from the mainstream, so they do not spread that heretical
> > contagion of independent thinking.
> >
> > It seems the next logical target if one were to have an objective to
> > incrementally remove independent thinkers from spreading contagion is the
> > university. So I would invite all of you to examine the narrative of
> > artists in society and their removal or their channeling into "safe
> spaces"
> > like 30 second videos, 3 minute songs, 30 minute sitcoms, 130 minute
> movies
> > (because we have to put them somewhere, we can't just kill them). Then
> > please consider if something similar is happening in the spaces of the
> > university and independent thinking.
> >
> > I would not at all be surprised to see there are parallels.
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Annalisa
> >
> >
> >
>