Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 22:30:02 -0600
Subject: Re: cyborg *


Glen,

Your comments are very much what I have in mind in connection with the
cyborg discussion.  My point was that there is an anthropology as well 
as an ontology in Lyotard which sees art as a kind of interface, not so
much between us and the world, but between us and the event.  The nodes
of our perceptions become extended and intensified through the mere
occurence which presents itself before being understood.

Here are some remarks from Lyotard:

"The powers of sensing and phrazing are being probed on the limits of
what is possible, and thus the domain of the perceptible-sensing is
being extended. Experiments are made.  This is our postmodernity;s
entire vocation, and commentary has infinite possibilities open to it."

"Today's art consists in exploring things unsayable and things
invisible."

"This leads to experimentation which is poles apart from experience."

eric 

fuller wrote:
> 
> G'day,
> 
> Also with the cyborg discussion isn't it also possible to think of a cyborg
> in terms of a widening of the subject's field of experience (seeing in UV,
> hearing ultrasonic,etc), and also increasing the mediated nature of that
> which is already experienced, through many more layers of 'technology' (in
> which I include ego-based rational thought, as a culturally constructed, or
> programmed, technology).
> 
> Something which I have been thinking about is the apparent irreconcilablity
> of an ethically sound perspective (informed, self-reflexive, etc), and one
> that is indebted to immediate experience as pleasurable, painful, etc like a
> young child for example, where the latter seems undenialbly more 'real'.
> Badiou seemed to close this gap to some extent, however, a cyborg
> subjectivity, which increased the mediation of experience, would that not
> continue to reinforce dominant precepts and ethical shortcomings?
> 
> Glen.