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Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Avery Singer at Stedelijk Museum


(link)

Remember that scene in the Matrix when, readying for climax, they enter the blank void of the virtual and conjure a Babelinian library of weapons? Whatever the power of its virtual blank slate - despite its seeming infinince - it couldn't conjure a rifle outside of what any American police force would already own, revealing severe limitations of its virtuality to the pre-existing commodities already found in its prison-like realm. Whether this digital limitation was an artifact of its virtual script, or the inability of the actor/agents to themselves think outside their commodic prison* it showcases an inherent issue with the power of the virtual as still limited to human ability to think outside itself.

The virtual "White Room" is obviously a metaphor for a blank canvas.
This impotence in manifestability still inherent to primitive modes as it irrupts again in new technologies.

Like Guyton, the digital expression comes with the promise of fuller possibility that anything thought can be rendered, that the blank white space can be filled with anything you can dream, printed direct from our subconcious but reveals our dreams to be mostly the same but with some effects added.

*and thus tragically reveal themselves to be stuck in their own learned form of The Matrix's prison, i.e. never truly free having already internalized the dominant order.


See too: Wade Guyton at Academie Conti & Le ConsortiumTala Madani at David Kordansky