22 May 2012

Apples and fork bombs

This homage to Jan Gossaert comes from here. Charlie Gere showed it as part of his talk, "Rethinking the Digital", at Jerwood Space, which concerned the role of "the hand", and touch, in the technological environment and its notions of community. As soon as people started counting, or naming things, we were in the digital age, he contends - things became discrete, separated from each other. He quoted someone - I didn't catch who - as saying "without borders there would be nothing at all" (it might have been Malcolm McCullough?). Derrida was mentioned a lot, and Marshall McLuhan; Jean-Luc Nancy ("On Touching"), and Andre Leroi-Gourham are among those new to me. The books mentioned make a substantial reading list. Also new to me was the concept of  "fork bomb" - but I didn't catch whose artwork this was, only that it was made in 2002 (and it doesn't say here, which is the only image I could find) -
Interesting, too, how evolution into a bipedal creature freed hominids to use their hands and make tools - things separate from themselves - and how the brain subsequently enlarged through this new haptic skill.

Next, Leap will track and mimic hand movements, and get rid of the keyboard and mouse - how long before we're "writing in the air"?

Watch it online at http://vimeo.com/45433674 

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