Cybism ECAM 2008
Mexico City
These
brief words are an attempt to outline for ECAM 2008 what I am calling
Cybism by stating what I take to be its underlying attributes.
Cybism
is a new sensibility emerging in art respecting the integration of certain
aspects of science, technology and consciousness Š a consciousness struggling
to attend to the prevailing current spirit of our age. This cybistic
zeitgeist I identify as being precisely a quality-of-life desire in
which everything, everywhere, all at once is connected in a rhizomatic web
of communication. Therefore, cybism is no longer content with the
regurgitation of standardized repertoires. Rather I detect in art a fertile
attraction towards the abstractions of advanced scientific discovery - discovery
now stripped of its fundamentally reductive logical methodology.
Moreover,
cybism can be used to characterize a certain group of researchers and
their understanding of where cultural space is developing today.
Cybists reflect on system dynamics with a hybrid blending (cybridization)
of the computational supplied virtual with the analog. Digitization is a key
metaphor for the cybists only in the sense that it is the fundamental
translating system today.
This blending of the computational virtual with the analog
indicates the subsequent emergence of a new cybrid topological
cognitive-vision which I have called the ŌviractualÕ: the space of connection
betwixt the computed virtual and the uncomputed corporeal (actual) world which
merge in cybism. This cybrid space of cybism can be further
inscribed as a span of liminality, which according to the anthropologist Arnold
van Gennep (based on his anthropological studies of social rites of passage) is
the condition of being on a threshold between spaces.
Concerning
this cybrid topological cognitive-vision, I am reminded here of two very
different, yet complimentary, concepts: entrainment and ˇgrˇore. Entrainment,
in electro-physics, is the coupling of two or more oscillators as they lock
into a commonly sensed interacting frequency. In alchemical terms an ˇgrˇore
(an old form of the word agrˇger) is a third concept or phenomenon which is
established from conjoining two different elements together. We suggest that
the term (concept) cybrid (and cybism) may be a concordant entrainment/ˇgrˇore
conception helpful in defining this third fused inter-spatiality which is
forged from the meeting of the virtual and the actual.
Co-extensive
notions found in cybism have piquant ramifications for art as product
in that the cybists are actively exploring the frontiers of science/technology
research so as to become culturally aware of the biases of consciousness in
order to amend those biases through the monumentality and permanency which can
be found in powerful art. They begin with the realization that every [new]
technology disrupts the previous rhythms of consciousness. Then, generally
speaking, they pursue their work in an effort to contradict the dominant
clichˇs of our time as they tend to move in their regimented grooves of
sensibility. In this sense their art research begins where the hard
science/technology ends.
Most
certainly cybists understand that in every era the attempt must be made anew to
wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. Hence the
role of the cybist is that of the explorer/researcher. The function of such an
explorationaly inclined artist however is not to only find, but to participate
in and foster a constant instability of consciousness, to mitigate against
self-stabilizing formations so as to encourage internal ŌcybomaticÕ connections
to sprout and expand. This integration goes far towards exemplifying an
aesthetic which has a problematic relationship to material science-based
reality.
Today, with the emergence and
continual growth of cyberspace, it seems that no sense of closure will ever be
able to contain the deterritorialization articulated and monumentalized
by cybism. Consequently, cybism has begun articulating a new
techno-digital sense of life. By looking at the complex social and
technological changes already occurring within the 21st century, cybists
seem to perceive the world now as a kaleidoscopic environment in which
every tradition has some valid residual form as information and sensation. A
world of perpetual transformation has emerged and established a seemingly
unrestricted area of abundant options.
Web published @ http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka.19.nechvatal.htm