sally mckay and lorna mills

Lorna Mills and Sally McKay

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Steven Kurtz is coming to Toronto this Saturday to give a talk hosted by InterAccess (details here). Kurtz is a political artist -- a founding member of the collective Critical Art Ensemble -- and he was spuriously charged with bioterrorism last spring.

Here's a bit from the IA press release: "Kurtz’ appearance in Toronto offers the public the opportunity to hear Kurtz and Gregg Bordowitz, spokesperson for the CAE Defense Fund. They will speak about the work of CAE and the importance of creative freedom and privacy rights to educating the public about the effects of “militarized” biotechnology practices. A moderated discussion period will follow Kurtz's talk, led by Sally McKay."

CAE employ "Contestational Biology" as a means of bringing amateur citizens into the ethical discourse around biotechnology. Says CAE: "Within a very brief period of time, anyone who is modestly literate can learn the fundamentals of scientific study and ethics." The publisher Autonomedia puts out the collective's highly readable manifestos in the form of cute little books, and CAE also makes the papers available in PDF format on their website. The stuff is easy to read, and while they play with coporate terms and turns of phrase, the stance is only a tad tongue-in-cheek, offering very solid analysis on modes of resistance, the power dynamics of technological mythmaking, and functional info on how science works.

CAE is all about information, and the website provides an excellent access to the work. In the project "Free Range Grain", the group set up in Europe with a portable lab for testing food for genetic modifications. The equipment they use is detailed in a webtour, as well as photos of the event and an articulate, thorough position paper, which states: "Biotechnology and the science behind it have to be one of the most misunderstood areas of production in the cultural landscape. Myths, fantasy, misleading speculation, disinformation, and so on abound in the public sphere. Part of the reason for this state of communicative disorder is that the scientific process never makes a public appearance, only the miracle products as commodity fetish. We want to bring the routinized processes of science to the public to let them see them and act within them.

For information on the US federal case against CAE, and how you can help, go here.

NB: On the occasion of Kurtz' arrest back in May, I made a post on CAE quoting their publication Flesh Machine on the false promise of virtual reality.

Penrose Tiling

I made some poorly substantiated complaints about string theory in a recent post. Roger Penrose, who might be the most famous mathematician alive, has some complaints too, which carry just a little bit more weight than mine! There is a series of his lectures -- Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe -- available free online at www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures/ [many many thanks to Marc Ngui for the tip].

String theory relies on the theory of supersymmetry as a "central ingredient." Supersymmetry calls for each particle to have a supersymmetric particle. But discovering these particles is proving very difficult. Says Penrose:

If you haven't seen the supersymmetric partner that's because we haven't built a powerful enough accelerator yet. As long as you don't find these things you just say "Well, we've got to build a more powerful machine," and it doesn't get disproved.

Another famous fact about string theory is that it requires extra dimensions. Penrose says:

When I first heard about string theory I really thought it was a fantastic idea, I must say. It looked very beautiful...But then I learned it doesn't work unless space/time has 26 dimensions. Some people might say, "Oh well, space/time doesn't have 26 dimensions, so that's the end of that." But that wasn't the reaction of some people. They say, "Well, if it doesn't have 26 dimensions, we'll make it have 26 dimensions.

But Penrose is far from dismissive of the theory. He recognises that it is compelling. In doing research he talked to Richard Thomas, a pure mathematician, who had the following to say:

Everytime there is a prediction made [by string theorists], and suitably interpreted mathematically, they turn out to be true. We have no idea why they're true, they must come from a higher reason.

Penrose asks, how much of the current interest in string theory comes from fashion, and how much from physical motivations? He feels that it is not the latter, that string theory does not hold together, and is not a theory of quantum gravity. But, it's not just fashion either. Says Penrose:

I'm jolly glad that people are doing it, and something deep about physics is being revealed by these ideas.

I've only watched the first lecture in the series so far, and it was excellent. The math and a lot of the concepts are beyond my grasp, but an untrained person like me can certainly follow the basic ideas, and the overhead projector diagrams and careful logic are a welcome antidote to the whizz-bang graphics of Brian Greene's Elegant Universe series.

TV screen gif by Sally McKay

Tom Sherman, "How To Watch Television", from Cultural Engineering (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1983), p.56

Sit so close, you can't follow the action. The edits come too fast this close. Turn the channel selector. Turn it again.Turn the contrast up. If you have a focus control, turn it so the image is grainy. Toughen up the image. Just a touch of fine tuning ... press your face on the screen. Keep your eyes open. It's beautitul up close. You can feel the charge on your face. You can sense it when you close your eyes. The cool light is red inside.

Goodridge Roberts, Bright Day, Georgian Bay, 1961. Royal Bank Financial Group's Corporate Art Collection	(detail)
B.C. Binning, Atomic Foundation, 1950. Artists 4 Kids, Original Prints by Canada's Finest Contemporary Artists	(detail)
Frederick H. Varley, For What? Canada's Digital Collections	(detail)
George Elliot (1953): "Colour of course, is the first element to be sacrificed if painting is put in front of the television camera. Can you imagine a Goodridge Roberts landscape without Roberts' very private blues and greens? Binning's subtleties of colour are an important part of his charm. Varley's disturbing palette of piercing greens, blues, cold pinks and earth are essential to the uniqueness of Varley. [...] A painting needs an intellectual presence before it can work its magic. Placing anything between the viewer and the painting kills the viewer." Excerpts from: George Elliot, "A Warning to Artists," in Canadian Art, Spring 1953, p.10-6 (as reprinted in Video re/View, Peggy Gale and Lisa Steele, eds., Toronto: Art Metropole/VTape, 1996, p.20)

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