“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, October 9, 2010

Robert Jackson on hyperobjects

Robert Jackson, who has a beautifully detailed and crystal clear blog on all kinds of issues pertaining to algorithmic art and speculative realism (and some very fetching pics of his Heideggerian cat posing with numerous philosophical works of our age), has this post up on hyperobjects.

There is a very compelling analysis of John F Simon's Every Icon, an algorithmic piece that executes what it says in the title over the course of 10 trillion years. Jackson concludes that what hyperobjects do is make us acknowledge the reality of what OOO calls execution. I think this is a truly essential part of the argument and I'll be talking about his insight next time I do the talk in New Orleans. Making it very clear, of course, that it's his idea (you'll be be able to check since I'll upload the talk here). Thanks Robert.

One thing I find striking about Jackson's work is his refusal to kowtow to systems theory in an age where it appears to be swallowing everything.

3 comments:

DFX said...

Tim make sure that you get somebody to show you Howard Taylor's work when your in Perth. I think you'll like the op/perceptual/phenomenological/landscape inspired integration of a truly "Ecological Thought"! And make sure you stop through Fremantle and have a coffee at Gino's cafe. It'll make your trip!

Nick Guetti said...

I wonder, can we think of poverty as a sort of mesoscopic hyperobject in the context of a society based on materialism? Somebody asks "How you doing?" and you immediately think about the fact that your mortgage is in foreclosure and you don't know if the food in your cupboard will last through this pay period, that sort of thing. I guess the trouble with that idea is that poverty is still something that's somewhere over the horizon for some people, which seems to imply that an honest understanding of ecology would necessarily be anticapitalist...not a startling revelation, I guess...

Timothy Morton said...

Could be Nick. I'll think about this. Duncan, I'm so sorry, but I won't be physically in Perth--logistical problems at my end. I'll be Skyping in.