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<title>Terms for a Living Media Culture</title>
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<p><font color="#178282">_______________</font>
<p><font color="#008099" size="4">Terms for a Living Media Culture</font>
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<font color="#178282"><font size=+1>_____________</font></font></center>
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<font color="#178282"><font size=+1>These are terms I've cobbled together
over the years to help formulate a cultural practice in response to the
onward rush of new technology. A number of them have been used in the context of the media rituals I explored in Brooklyn in the early 1990s. </font></font><br>
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<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Hyper-Runt</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">A cultural process, art event or artificial lifeform
which, through some unexpected mutation or character trait, jumps category
and comes alive as a media virus or meme. A hyper-runt takes on an attitude
of its own, distinctly different from that which its inadvertent creators
intended. I came up with this term while working on a new media exhibition
for Inliquid in 2004. (See <a href="http://www.inliquid.com/hyper-runt" target="outerframe">Hyper-Runt</a>
exhibit)</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Bionic Code</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">A system of bionic ethics where a network diagram
and an aphorism are distributed through electronic media to encourage a
system of non-violent problem-solving routines. I came up with the term
in 1992 when I abandoned the more awkward phrase, "social programs," to
describe a series of computer-generated network symbols. (See <a href="http://www.netlingo.com/lookup.cfm?term=bionic%20code" target="outerframe">Netlingo</a>.)</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Zoacode</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">My Bionic Codes evolved into Zoacodes in the
late 1990s; a metaphor of circuitry gave way to one of neurons and "living
codes." Like their predecessors, Zoacodes propagate in the plasma of media
and popular culture and are intended to induce graceful relationships.
Zoacodes have been cultivated to operate as stand-alone media viruses as
well as mental stimulants in my narrative motion picture, Glimmers in the
Nervepool.</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Wigglism</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">Born in an age of multimedia interactivity, fuzzy
logic and artificial lifeforms, Wigglism approaches truth as a living blur
of interactivity. The term Wigglism itself is intended to be a lively goad
for nurturing a vital dialogue. The very definition of Wigglism is emerging
through dialogue, beginning with a <a href="wigglism.html" target="outerframe">Manifesto</a>
I launched on the internet in 1996.</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Wigglist</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">One who abandons art, science and religion for
the immediate satisfaction and responsibility of nurturing every situation
into a lively form. This wiggly entity or worldform (weltanform as opposed
to weltanschauung) emerges into being through continuous interaction with
the world. A wigglist abandons objectivity and connoisseurship for participation:
she doesn't communicate <b>at</b> the world, but rather intercodes <b>with</b>
the world, helping to nurture into being a collective, evolving, truth-as-liveliness.</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Media Spore</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">A code which unleashes a mature "Media Organism."
See below.</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Media Organism</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">In 1992 I presented an exhibit at Test-Site gallery
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, called Heat-Seeking Psycho-Suctions. These squiggly
focal entities, projected on the floor, were triggered by people walking
through the gallery. The code for the computer-generated forms was dubbed
a "media spore" while the more complex set of symbiotic relationships between
the user, the projection and the code was deemed a "media organism." Media
Organisms are "herded" and "cultivated" as opposed to "created."</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Media Breeder</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">One who breeds and cultivates "Media Organisms."</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Expressionist Programming</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">In 1984 while writing code for a computer game
at MIT, a strange effect was unleashed which I hadn't planned for. When
running the program a user would let loose jets of blue lines which streamed
across the screen and began propagating beyond any controls available to
the user. Rather than scrapping the program, I tweaked the code to enhance
and focus the strange effect. Although I overhauled the code later to complete
the game, the earlier anomaly has stuck in my mind. I decided to call my
working method "Expressionist Programming." Allowing the computer some
breathing room, as it were, and being alert to unintended effects, set
up an expressive space in which the programmer, the computer and the user
combine into an expressive ecosystem. The screwed up, but delightfully
eerie, game was clearly something I would later call a Hyper-Runt. (see
above).</font>
<br>
<p><img SRC="web_jam.GIF" BORDER=0 height=97 width=94>
<br><font color="#178282"><font size=-1>Web Jam, Born 1993</font></font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Web Jam</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">A weblike layering of humans, media and ecosystem
into a singular, pulsing jam. (See Web Jam at <a href="http://www.netlingo.com/lookup.cfm?term=Web%20jam" target="outerframe">Netlingo</a><a href="http://www.netlingo.com" target="outerframe">.</a>)</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Media Compression</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">In New York in 1990 I launched a series of community-based
events called Media Compressions. These media rituals were an attempt to
collectivise media consumption in a circular "media war room."</font>
<p><img SRC="Media_Comp_Simpson_sm.%20jpeg" BORDER=2 height=117 width=175>
<br><font face="Geneva"><font color="#1E92B3"><font size=-2>Media Compression
at Simpson College</font></font></font>
<br><font face="Geneva"><font color="#1E92B3"><font size=-2>Indianola,
Iowa, 2004</font></font></font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Weird Thing Zone</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">In New York in 1990 I set up a zone within a
Williamsburg, Brooklyn community festival where artists, children, roboticists
and others could set up phenomena which transcended their category for
the general delight and mental exercise of all. By presenting the stuff
simply as "weird things," it bypassed the usual prejudices which afflict
most products of professional tinkering. This is a close cousin to Hakim
Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone (or T.A.Z.)</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Intercoding</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">To approach communication as an attempt to congeal
into a social organism through mutual programming. Intercoding can take
place between different species, objects and machines. We and our environment
program each other.</font><font color="#178282"></font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>The Radical Center</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282">I published the following manifesto in Zine Magazine
and 188 Magazine, Brooklyn, 1990. I first distributed the manifesto on
a poster in New York in1989.</font><font color="#178282"></font>
<p><font color="#178282">THE RADICAL CENTER: To insist on perfection is
to stand inside a fortress: all who agree with us stand within, all who
disagree become our enemies. An oppositional dialogue ensues leading to
blindness and war. Such is the results of the fictions left and right,
East and West, popular and elite, art and politics. To believe that opposites
are an essence of nature is to reveal an ignorance of continuums. It is
far better to admit that all political and cultural positions are momentary
flashes in the flood of cultural evolution. In the place of dichotomies,
let us substitute a process. Let us meet in the village center, the mental
center, in that space of open inquiry which melts down all particularities.
Let us embrace an attitude of restless integration. Let us entwine around
shared languages, familiar reference points, and common paradigms. Let
us sing our songs and offer our challenges in the nodes of such webs, there
in that ubiquitous, ever-changing, radical center.</font>
<p><font color="#008099"><font size=+1>Hyper Psychology</font></font>
<br>
<font color="#178282">All terms evolve in meaning and this one is bound
to be highly volatile. As robotics and cybernetics become increasingly
more complex, if not human, it is tempting to form a kind of "<b>robot
psychology</b>" to cope with such an emerging presence in our lives. However,
there are real doubts as to whether machines will ever adequately simulate our biological nuances. What
we need instead is a <b>Hyper Psychology</b> to investigate how the human
psyche navigates through a sea of machinery, information, media and prosthetic
devices.</font>
<p><font color="#178282">Even if a true Hal or Astroboy were to emerge
out of the computer labs, their very similarity to humans would necessitate
a similar form of <b>Hyper Psychology</b> to help them, and us, cope with
our ever-multiplying phylum of gadgets. It is now widely recognized that
roboticists are barking up the wrong tree if they are still attempting
to simulate human beings, an organism which evolved for millions of years
out of atomic elements. Until the scientists employ the same bottom-up,
evolutionary strategy of construction, they will always fail to arrive
at our sublime, tangled complexity. The scientists may as well strip off
their lab coats, have sex and make babies. I can vouch that it works.</font>
<p><font color="#178282"><b>Hyper Psychology</b> isn't merely about a humanoid
response to the machine-world. It's about a new form of humanity with a
machine-enhanced nervous system responding to an evolving planetary ecosystem.
A <b>hyper psychologist</b> recognizes that we were never singular beings
in the first place and that our minds have always been constructed through
an interplay, and an <b>intercoding</b>, with our environment. As we arrange
things in our external world (in collaboration and competition with other
arrangers) we arrange our minds, our dreams and our future actions. Like
Freud's original and rather radical notion of an unlimited, probing psyche,
a Hyper Psychology would, at best, defy any limits to its definition. Its
purpose would be to liberate our sense of being, and possibly even re-connnect
us <b>meaningfully</b> with the crawling, everlasting wilderness. In this
post-human, interactive, wiggling age, <b>Hyper Psychology</b> and <b>Hyper
Therapy</b> would amount to the same thing.</font>
<p><font color="#178282">Here's a movie outline to elaborate on the question
of where to place the soul of r<b>obot psychology</b> and the need to widen
it into a form of <b>hyper psychology</b>:</font>
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<font color="#3366CC">Shazock the robot is so sensitive she can hardly
cope with the stresses of 21st century life. She constantly critiques the
other machines in her midst and runs off on a romantic quest for communion
with the infinite. "I insist that I am a wild and singular being," she
bellows at the moon. "I shall dance unimpeded by the repugnant, constricting
technologies which contaminate my civilization." Just as Shazock reaches
a state of intense revelation, she discovers that she, too, is a machine.
"Skrod!" she declares, staring straight at the camera, "Oh, whatever. The
issue is not machines vs. organic life. It's about some explosive sense
of creation which all matter is participating in. Crank up the new hybrid
Bjork/Hendrix/Plankton mix."</font>
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<p><font color="#178282">--Ebon Fisher</font>
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<p><font color="#178282"><font size=-2>_________________</font></font>
<br><font color="#178282"><font size=-2>© 2004 Ebon Fisher</font></font></center>
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