Some Personal Remarks on the Social Context:

In 1967 a freindly mathematician wrote the programme to produce my first computer assisted drawing as part of my studies as a sculptor/printmaker at an art college in England. In 1972 I went to study in a Dutch Institute for Classical electronic music because it was the only way to gain access to a computer. I was a visual artist in a sound environment and I became interested in the relationship between the creative process in sound and visual media -particularly questions regarding the role of the medium in representing thoughrts and structures. I've been around a long time. In this time I've seen a lot of changes -and I'm upset, ashamed and even worried by what my generation and its successors have done and are still doing.

Some Positive Thinking:

i. You Are what You Think?

For better or for worse, people tend to associate themselves with their ideas and often find it difficult to accept that questioning and discussing their ideas and beliefs does not directly imply a criticism of them as a person. Sometimes we can get excited and inspired by our ideas -so idea, inspiration and emotion all get mixed up together. So when discussing things, it can sometimes be important to separate the ideas, feelings and creative ambitions from the knowledge and information that one has been taught -in order to question the "transmitted knowledge" without too much complicating emotional interference because one feels that one is personally under attack. Of course, sometimes, our ideas are so closely interwoven with what we believe ourselves to be that it is difficult to separate them. I guess that, on some level, I too am defined by my experiences and the belief system that has grown out of these experiences.

ii. Communication and Experience

At first glance, my declaration identifying myself with my work might seem to be a contradiction of my earlier remarks about separating one's ideas from one's identity. However, perhaps on reflection it can be seen that I first started talking about "transmitted knowledge" (which is what others tell us about the world and how they believe it to be) and ended up talking about "experience" (which is what happens to us). As one gets older one often discovers an increasing dissonance between what people tell you to believe and what one actually experiences to be true. In fact, accepting this difference and exploiting it to gain more effective insights into how things actually work is perhaps one of the key advantages of growing older.

Unfortunately, it also seems that society (and perhaps human nature) has invented lots of ways of preventing communication between the generations.

The Artist's Life:

Contrary to public opinion -the life of an artist is not always exciting. True, there may be invitations to exhibition openings, festivals and other social occasisions -but much of the time is also spent in the studio, working quietly on whatever projects one may be involved with. For an artist/programmer, the work is extra hard because of the technical aspect which also has to be mastered.

Some Important Questions:

How did these changes affect you professionally and personally?

Presumably, the negative terms in which I've expressed these changes already suggests that these things have had a powerful and damaging effect on both my professional and personal life.

Intellectually, I find this isn't such a great problem: There are positive sides. Indeed this website is a concerted effort to use the advantages of modern technology to try and unravel the complex threads that underlie the relationships between society, art and technology. -Threads that I believe could be both fascinating and extremely benifical if they could only become more visible within the public conciousness.

However, emotionally, I find it deeply distressing that so much that I find has beauty and interest remains ignored -and that almost all attempts to discuss these things with others have (for various reasons) apparently failed. Unfortunately, this frustration then leads to anger which then often makes communication even more difficult.

The value of language:

There is a story about an orchestra practicing for the first time with a new conductor. After several unsuccessful attempts to explain in vartious emotional terms how he wants a certain section to be played the conducter frustratedly shouts: "Oh just play it mezzoforte" -at which point the orchestra gives a great sigh of relief and then begin to play the piece correctly..... Sometimes the pressure to be unique (especially in a commercial context) can undermine the communicative role of language by undermining, or disguising, the conventional meanings. In turn, this undermines social cohesion by undermining the transmission of knowledge through a degradation of the language.

Our (western) society -for both historial and commercial reasons, focusses on "expression" but is rather weak on evaluating the expression. It seems to be becoming increasingly so that what one expresses is less important than the fact that one is expressing it. In the context of mass media and the internet, this is dangerous state of affairs because because powerful belief systems are created (which have huge political, economic and even national security implications) and yet there is no way of testing the validity or value of these beliefs.

First and Second-Hand Knowledge:

Imagine a world in which there were no communication systems -a world where all we could ever know were our own experiences...... On one level we would be ignorant of many things -but on another level, we would at least know from personal experience what we were talking about.

Perhaps in such a world, it would be easier to "respect" the opinions of others -because one would know that whatever a person believed-it was based on a genuine experience. Their opionions and thoughts would therefore be assured of having some value -even if it was not clear exactly what that value was -or how it might relate to ones own experience.

Indeed, in such a world, there would be little point in simply "expressing" ones thoughts -because the really intersting work would lie in trying to uncover the networks of experience that lead to viewpoints opposite to ones own. In my experience, it is this search for understanding that underlies the process of creating computer programmes that reflect and explore artisitic concepts and thoughts. It is this distrust of (second hand) "information" and the love of exploratory investigation which I find in the often neglected and misunderstood "computational process" that makes me so critical of the ICT paradigm.

Points and Spaces:

I'd like to question the transmitted knowledge without damaging the inspiration and the creative motivation to investigate and create. Such questioning of one's own belief and value systems is difficult and often painful. Perhaps this will be less painful if one does not concentrate on "making and scoring points" or winning arguments (by hook or by crook) but by questiong accepted values and trying to expand them into new mental spaces that provide a greater conceptual area in which to move more freely and find new perspectives. Hopefully the resulting new insights will eventually provide ample emotional and functional repayment for the process.

Some Personal Thoughts on Global Systems:

With the fall of the wall dividing Europe (and the world) between "East" and "West" for many people the world was supposed to enter an new phase of utopian development.

The end of the communist dictatorship was expected to bring and end to ideological divisions and false dichotomies. There was no longer to be a great divide between the free and the rich on one side and the poor and oppressed on the other side.

If western concepts have gained global dominance -and there are problems within the resulting global system -then it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that these problems might well be the result of problems within the system that has gained dominance.

Global problems may well be the result of problems inherent within western philosophy and/or cultuer. If this is true -then if an increasing numbers of people around the world give up their local cultures in order to join the global community (as the demands of a single global system would suggest -if not dictate) then the world may be destroying precisely the (local) conceptual systems that it needs to survive.