Collateral Damage: Clouds, Criminality and Chatbots
Symposium:
- ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More presentations from ISEA2011:
Session Title:
- Without Sin: Taboo and Freedom within Digital Media
Presentation Title:
- Collateral Damage: Clouds, Criminality and Chatbots
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Panel: Without Sin: Taboo and Freedom within Digital Media
“The problem of language is at the heart of all the struggles between the forces striving to abolish the present alienation and those striving to maintain it… Under the control of power, language always designates something other than authentic experience.” _All the King’s Men, Situationist International, 1963
This paper takes the position that the language[s] of technology, and the application of language within digital environments, continue to be intimately entwined with the ongoing struggle against “the present alienation”, as well being implicated in the undermining of authenticity (the lack of a true identity). Supported by Adorno’s observation that “[O]bjects do not go into their concepts, without leaving a remainder…”, (Negative Dialectics), the ways in which language frames experience, identity, and political and social realities, in online contexts will be thought through. If, as Adorno suggests, language is a total system which results in conceptual closure, and mis-directs experience, where might we glimpse the linguistic ‘remainders’, with their potential for revolution/redefinition, within the digital context? A close reading of All The King’s Men, and other texts on language and power, will be presented alongside a series of examples which highlight the problem of language. If we are collateral damage to the continual tyrrany of language, how do we resist this, in the new information environments and playgrounds we inhabit? If the persistent taboo which haunts language is making any attempt to stand outside it, in order to assess its influence, how do we break out of this double-bind?
