“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, June 4, 2011

Duchamp and Bogost


Ian Bogost notes a nice article about Cow Clicker from a UK tech magazine. The magazine says that Duchamp's urinal was intended to be provocative and thoughtful, while Cow Clicker...well it never quite spells out the difference.

I think if anything, object for object, Cow Clicker is the more sophisticated one. Duchamp's piece is like a frame grab from one instance of Cow Clicker. If Duchamp had personally visited your house on request and refashioned one of your bicycle wheels into a work of art, that might be a little bit similar. Cow Clicker is working with much more basic elements of human beingness, and to that extent it's much more sophisticated.

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