CONVERSATIONS ON CODE AND EMOTION

Kristin:

Hello. What's up? are you testing something or just saying hi. What are you up to Saturday night? Let's get liquor and compare notes on code and emotion? Logic, lambda calculus, relational algebra, a reduction of the ubiquitous or omnipotent to the simplicity and symmetry of binary, and of course, phosphorescence - CODE soothes, whiskey by the light of the moon method, the raw observation of that chugging and crawling-wars, draughts, sex, love, rape and stuff. My step would be far more crinkled if it were not for code.

Jen:
Code and emotion, the parallel is nonexistent. Machines give off that non-human vibe for a reason doncha know. Still the capture sounds enticing- how about a wine bar. Can we go to a wine bar and sample cheeses that we have never tasted before-

emotion towards code

lack of emotion within code

code emoting emotion

emotion hiding behind code (the new illness- forgot anorexia, self-injury razor slashing and pills- it is computer science that is deriding today's youth)

motion of code belying emotion

de ipso facto emotion that doesn't need code

Kristin:
We are describing, as if it were not obvious, the new DIGITAL LIVING paradigm.

(Sardonic, terse, omnipotent, caustic, mordant, gentle, respectful, rambling, sprawling, ironic, beautiful, (balanced?) and emotive- illness and cure.)

Jen:

lambda logic, etc
-DIGITAL LIVING paradigm- are we describing an archetype or "a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated"? If so, then I will quibble with perhaps not

Sardonic -as I think code and emotion, combined, frightens "derisively mocking" into an entirely new corner of skeptical humour.

Terse- extremely so, what is code with superfluity but a programmer with social skills, or rather what is digital living without clean efficiency if we are upping the ante beyond the union of code and emotion to a portrait of today's digital living

Omnipotent- well of course, god is dead, Nietzsche is dead, omnipotence has to rein somewhere, where but in the self-absorbed projectile begun in the 80's of self and intelligence, (a sardonic intelligence no less, a sardonic terse intelligence and yes

Caustic- survival instinct at this point, nothing but Darwinian instinct

Mordant, not quite acorroding substance used in etching, rather the redundancy of caustic yet more French>>- how about instead of altering redundancy we throw in the cognates of acrimonious (which could be both- how exciting) or trenchant which is one of the first French words I feel close to

Respectful- hmmm, interesting, but it begs of what, of what

Rambling -yes, as all that is not hypertext personified an ability to ramble scramble babble and tongue smash with hyphens and

Sprawling - well that feels right in describing anything human, you must sprawl if you are a sexual being or if you have tactile sensation- but is that quite explicit to our paradigm or rather a general discovery on human nature

Ironic- again, interesting, but how

Beautiful- that is your bent on the specified, but I could contend otherwise if I would;

Balanced: what balances and how- a balance I would assume on living would take the three into account mind, body and spirit yes. Mind I could see so easily, spirit is up for high interpretation and what of body, as my body sits stagnant on the 3rd chair of the day and perhaps my favorite of all-

Emotive- illness and cure, now is it emotion that is the illness and code the cure, or the other way around, and again this goes into the sprawling category, as humans we emote, not that I fear putting in any consistence but if we are going to be describing the digital living paradigm and as terseness is one of its qualities, shouldn't we disregard consistencies in human behavior or we beg the opportunity to digress into all sorts

And before I go on into a response of your riposte 00- I will offer that tomorrow is Friday and thus do we need a sitemap for our conversation so it can go anywhere and everywhere it needs b/c this communication to me now grows frustrating in its simplicity- how can I respond to all in its necessary tentacles

Kristin:

We meet tonight to conspire on our manifesto. This manifesto is, of course, developing into an autonomous-interactive-multimedia agent-- as it is a manifesto about THE NEW DIGITAL LIVING PARADIGM. Our level of irony and cheese also increase over time. As an object of "Digital Modernity", this manifesto will become not a cyborg--(because that is not a modern concept anymore--cyborg is 80's sci-fi) but a "Fully-Interactive Multimedia Wireless Agent" or FIMWA, pronounced as is. FIMWA smacks of trend, omnipotence and terseness.

Random comments: Implicit in the language of code are references to biological life. In my opinion this is because those early progenitors:
1) saw themselves as GOD
2) had no social life - ei spouse or kids - and with no other option fulfilled the reproductive instincts with code--result: code specs named with biological reproduction vocabulary [spawn].
3) read too much Isaac Asimov [http://www.asimov.com/src/books/asimov_catalogue.php] as pimpled youth.

This is an example of an "Asimovian":

" I'm an Asimov fanatic. The first Asimovian book I read was I, Robot. I was introduced to it by a friend when I was thirteen which is now, gee, a quarter of a century ago. I still have that original book in my collection. (I'll give it him back one day). Since then I've read every Asimov novel and short story - and I read them over and over and over and ... The Galactic novels are my favourite." - http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/1136/index.html

Okay back to FIMWA...

--Later--

At this point we may have decided that FIMWA's cradle is FID, a fully immersive device. We need to decide is FID's internal upholstery will be faux fur. Because we want to avoid references to the word pod, it may be important to stay away from any possible tactile references to the 60's or 70's, that is the use of faux fur accessories at the same time as pod-like objects [pod data types] are being used. Certainaly, it seems that at least one decision was reached tonight. It was in response to the question, Who would want to participate in this manifesto? The answer has been mutually agreed upon as being somewhat irrelevant because implicit in declaring something as a manifesto is the egocentric assumption that everybody should participate in the discovery of said manifesto's Truth. Therefore, we don't need to care about who or why. This is a manifesto and everybody will read it and if they don't they are unaware and ignorant. Thus...all we need to do in continue declaring.

-JUMP-

2 or 3 years later.

Feburary 2003, San Pablo Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico

Jen writes:

Times sin code, sin tecnología

And when you are outside the common place, away from the understanding of the daily ache- you must find again the description, your expression of passion and words. Because if all else, this is the underlying layer always.

The buzz, the electronic pulse is not here, yet we must find a way to content and enrich and satiate the mind, yes. I do not think it comes down to just the body here in the mountains without, in the darkness without shapes, in accepting the blunt conversation because you do not yet know the roll and nuance. Although you cannot ignore that the body seems to gain precedence, it becomes fuller and asserts itself more-hunger and movement more likely preoccupations than the for-loop and our beautiful switch.

Here in Mexico, I want to write as- I see the opportunity to describe amarillo y magenta and the Earth filled with the sediments of the dead. It is again an uneven world-one that grasps dichotomies from a reclining glance. Here, we inhabit the land as we were born to, as the Aztecs taught. Gods have sacrificed themselves for this, a gift. An yet, there is an innate and comfortable understanding that we will never grasp the mysteries of the Earth in its revolution, skies, winds, rain, childbirth, illness, sex and the plunging decadence of everyday. You smile as you stuff the last man into the metro doors, curious and gallant about death. You eat heartily with both spice and sugar- El Diablo. What is it, but else-breathe, lire, love? Quisiera beber de mero pero yo soy alegre nadando en las piscinas.

Kristin writes 06-27-03:

SPOTS, paths, Kruger, Cisneros, Duras, and Camus.

Last night we pointed to a backlit globe where we sat: a street in Chicago, on Belmont, near Western, in a bar aptly called Hungry Brain. The globe wasn't torn or ragged near our SPOT. We quickly calculated where Tom was (Zambia), closer to Julie and Jesse (Kenya) then to us. We considered this, while the raffle grew fuller of amplified announcements. You had fallen asleep in your car in the back parking lot at about 8:00pm. When you woke, it was after 9:00pm. It was around 10:00 pm when we pointed to this SPOT.

Mango, John's golden blonde dog, has a bone tumor. The vet doesn't know if it has metastasized. Robert and I sat with John and Mango for a few hours before we left for our SPOT on the globe that night. It was during this time that John asked about Tom.

"How's Tom?" John was sitting on a stool, exhaling a Camel unfiltered. He looked up at the smoke's outline in sillouette. There was a window behind me.

"He sounded good in his one phone call and few emails. His meetings seem to be going well, but he expressed that he was tired", I sat next to Mango on a twin sized matress centered in the room and on the floor.

"How's the situation there?" John carried on, eyes red.

I swiveled my shoulders and waste to the right in order to pet Mango's head. "It is better than Zimbabwe, politically. . . but that is not saying much. It's still really poor".

Today, the vet amputates Mango's leg.

A few days earlier, I ran errands and worked on a company newsletter. I also programmed some database <<slash>> front-end craziness.

Last night, on the way over to the SPOT it was dusk and I told Robert that I felt unreality or disassociation or was it hyper-reality. The chemicals that make me up seemed to be more real than the consciousness that they are supposed to create. I am no different, ever and quite Predetermined.

In our SPOT, I thought about Barbara Kruger because someone brought up how when they tried to be an artist their art always had to have a message and they said the message tended to be too 1980's high school gothic.

"Needless to say", they continued, "I am not an artist". I wanted to respond, but I didn't. I simply thought about BK's message and began to feel quite anxious in fear its contradictions:

"What I love is more compelling than what you love. More profound, more riveting, sexier. My taste is more developed than yours. Hipper, more knowing, more evolved."

Here and there, in and out of SPOTS and enumerating paths that cross these SPOTS-an intersection.

Sometimes, like the morning before I left for a burial, some sappy but news worthy story that reflects life's hardships will trigger an overwhelming rush of sadness-a tear. Then it ends, as if what I quickly felt was just moving through on its path to elsewhere, I-an inconsequential intersection and elsewhere-a more deserving victim, a dying man in Zambia perhaps.

Cisneros' Cleofilas proclaims passion as-"The kind the books and songs and telenovelas describe when one finds, finally, the great love of one's life, and does whatever on can, must do, at whatever the cost."

Duras describes passion or the lack thereof - if you remember - in The Lover: "She says- The wish to be about to kill a lover, to keep him for yourself, yourself alone, to take him, steal him in defiance of every law, every moral authority - you don't know what that is, you've never experienced it? You say--Never. She looks at you, repeats, A dead man's a strange thing."

Would you find Murder in Mexico, if you stayed long enough in those mountains, running up and down the rocks with the dogs, ignoring electric grids and amplified bullhorns announcing the two-in-the-morning discounted llamadas del teléfono?

I will apply that sense of insanity. Story:

LOVE: She doesn't have the same urgency that she had with S. Their passion was super fast but full of hours of exploration-lights and sounds at casinos. They examined each other's skin, eyes, and bone structure. They examined loneliness, death, fear and starvation. They peed together. These things were part of the love that they didn't declare until after they ended-crumpled on the hallway floor, crying and desperately pathetic. It was then, after severing their touch that they felt safe enough to speak of their love. This declaration of love didn't change things, of course. They still separated and played games of jealousy for months. Then she went to Panama for 16 weeks, came home, went to a friend's party, and met a really good and handsome man.

FOOD: All that previous year, she was skinny, too. She didn't think about food. She was so consumed and satiated with life -whether luminous and nimble or dismal and cumbersome. That is, she was feeling so intensely all the particles of life -day and night- really soaking it up-with every breath through her skin-tips of fingers tingling that she was full all the time-passion. She is so often hungry now-10 years later. She needs to eat at least 4 times a day-a lot of peanut butter or special granola blends. She has gained 20 pounds because unless she eats she has trouble feeling. Food, the intake of it, the taste perhaps, narrows her concentration, consciousness to a very concise place set in contentment and pleasure-passion. When its over, her body, having felt better briefly, wants more, doesn't want to go back to the world, to the aching muscles or energy expenditures of bodily movement- to joblessness, to self-doubt, self-loathing, mirrors, comparisons, evaluations of intelligence, unwanted hair growth on lips, chin, and pubic area, cellulite, lapses in memory, inabilities to master song lyrics or second languages, spelling mistakes, cat hair, dog shit, cracks in the wall, plumbing leaks, mother's who hang out with celebrities and make fun of fat people, father's who never ask you about your personal life, people who seem to look past you-because you are a ghost-ghostly, fat and pathetic. It is amazing how this perspective shifts from day to day. At times, she doesn't think this at all.

Camus' The Stranger has a point when seen so clearly the convergence of the bright sun, the blade, the sweat, and the stall in time what else could have been done but to kill the Arab. It is as it is.

This morning, after having had that SPOT last night, I sat in traffic for 2 hours - a helicopter blocked my path. Not in Chicago, you say, but it really is true. I never reached where I thought I was going and I listened to a man on the radio.