03 09/19
20:07

Bruno Munari’s Manifesto del Macchinismo 1938

| Categories: art, machine, technical media

Il mondo, oggi, è delle macchine.

Noi viviamo in mezzo alle macchine, esse ci aiutano a fare ogni
cosa, a lavorare e a svagarsi. Ma cosa sappiamo noi dei loro
umori, della loro natura, dei loro difetti animali, se non attraverso
cognizioni tecniche, aride e pedanti?

Le macchine si moltiplicano più rapidamente degli uomini,
quasi come gli insetti più prolifici; già ci costringono
ad occuparci di loro, a perdere molto tempo per le loro cure,
ci hanno viziati, dobbiamo tenerle pulite, dar loro da mangiare
e da riposare, visitarle continuamente, non far loro mai mancar nulla.

Fra pochi anni saremo i loro piccoli schiavi.

Gli artisti sono i soli che possono salvare l’umanità da questo pericolo.

Gli artisti devono interessarsi delle macchine,
abbandonare i romantici pennelli, la polverosa tavolozza, la tela e il telaio;
devono cominciare a conoscere l’anatomia meccanica, il linguaggio meccanico,
capire la natura delle macchine, distrarle
facendole funzionare in modo irregolare, creare opere d’arte
con le stesse macchine, con i loro stessi mezzi.

Non più colori a olio ma fiamma ossidrica, reagenti chimici,
cromature, ruggine, colorazioni anodiche, alterazioni termiche.

Non più tela e telaio ma metalli, materie plastiche, gomme e resine sintetiche.

Forme, colori, movimenti, rumori del mondo meccanico
non più visti dal di fuori e rifatti a freddo, ma composti armonicamente.

La macchina di oggi è un mostro!
La macchina deve diventare un’opera d’arte!

Noi scopriremo l’arte delle macchine!

22 10/18
20:56

Sinusoidal function

Tags: , | Categories: art, digital media, machine

Study Nr. 01 of a sinusoidal function


Made with processing

11 04/18
18:58

Clocks

Tags: , , | Categories: art, machine

30 06/15
13:00

Comparisons: six

Organic Machinic
Growth Fabrication
Hierarchy Forming
Adaptation Selection
Design
Healing Replacement

Schäffner, Wolfgang. Active Matter: 3D code, weaving, folding, and building. Conference at UdK Berlin, Berlin. 26 June 2015 See: Comparisons

22 06/15
11:40

12 06/15
14:46

idiots, hand workers, philosophers

Tags: , , , , | Categories: digital media, machine

According to Vilém Flusser, Plato establishes three possible relations between us and the world of the Ideas. First, we cannot remember the Ideas and therefore staying in the world of appearances. He calls those in this sort of relation: the idiots. In case the we do remember the Idea, there are two options. First, we could press the ideas out of the appearances and become hand workers or artists, politicians in Plato terms. Or second, we could turn and look directly at the ideas in which case we become theoreticians, philosophers in Plato. Plato mistrusted the artists of the politicians because in their handling of the appearance, the emerging idea is any the original pure Idea. It is a distortion. Their handling prevents access to the Idea as such by presenting a simulation. That way it is explained the hatred some monotheistic religions have to images.

 

Platonisch Pyramide nach Flusser.

Platonisch Pyramide nach Flusser.

 

In a cybernetic fashion, Flusser presents us a contemporary example of image creation. Someone thinks a space and atemporal ideas, he then codes them into a computer and this in turn produces an image that corresponds to the pure idea he had thought. This is a pure image of the pure idea because it is based on various technical codes such as a Cartesian coordinate system and symbolic operations with numbers. The image then turns into drawings and plans for an aeroplane that a series of automatic robots build.
 
Plato would take the person thinking the image and sitting in front of a computer as a true philosopher because these images are pure theory. They are processes of thought not or representation. The computer and the robot merely substitute for the hand workers. And those who pay and trust their lives to what the robots have built are the idiots.
 
If the person’s interest lies exclusively on the theoretical beauty and the process of thought of the image, he or she might be then a philosopher or a pure artists. Someone who has access the second degree of imagination brought by the technical images. This pure artist does not seek to imagine a particular aeroplane or any contrete entity. Her or his focus is exclusively on the abstract idea. There is no imitation nor simulacrum. Others, the politicians or in a more contemporary accent, the robots, would take this image-idea and imitate it and use it as a model. This pure artist experiences the pure idea, while the robots only try to press an appearance out the idea, whether it is an aeroplane or anything else.
 


  • Flusser, Vilém. Ein neuer Platonismus?. In kulturRevolution: modelle von gehirn und seele. Nr.19. November 1998. Klartext Verlag, Deutschland.

29 01/15
22:52

Peter Sunde at Transmediale 2015

Peter Sunde words at the opening ceremony of transmediale 2015. 28 Jan 2015 HKW Berlin, Germany.

The centralised model has destroyed the internet. We’ve lost and corporations have captured us all. We even carry the sensors, mics and cameras to monitor us. Don’t play the game: give up.

Update: Sunde’s base text published on Wired UK.

15 12/14
10:00

01 12/14
09:00

What is a Machine?

Tags: | Categories: machine, technical media
B17 Bomber Belly

B17 Bomber Belly. ca.1939

A machine is that which behaves in a machine-like way, namely, that its internal state, and the state of its surrounding, defines uniquely the next state it will go [1, p.261].

Thus, the material or materials from which a machine is made becomes irrelevant. As the machine becomes a function of internal and external states.


  1. Ross Ashby. Principles of the Self-Organizing System. 1962. p.261.

21 04/14
19:39

Laboratorium mechanicum (1700)

Tags: , , | Categories: machine

The five vowels of the Christopher Polhem’s mechanical alphabet (1700), the lever, the wedge, the screw, the pulley, and the winch are but one example of the mechanistic order of knowledge during the 18th century. This alphabet is too the seed for the industrial age. A seed constituted of a set of discrete blocks that assembled in various forms generate endless mechanisms and machines either to mimic nature and to create new natures. These discrete elements are drawn from the alphabet and written culture. Ideas are broken down to sentences, words, and ultimately letters. The alphabet is the first component in the mechanisation of thought.

Polhem’s mechanical Alphabet. Carl Johan Cronstedts Sketch 1729.Taken from: http://www.tekniskamuseet.se/images/200.b5a031e137ef868dbc3c5c/1339758196732/Cronstedt+dig22814_hb.jpg

This mechanical alphabet was used in teaching at the Laboratorium mechanicum – Sweden´s first school of technology

UPDATE: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/christopher-polhem-%E2%80%93-a-pioneer-and-a-technological-genius-tekniska-museet/ygISOQq_pem4IQ?hl=en



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