At the heart of it all, I just want to throw digital information like paint. Jackson Pollock-style. Punch it, mold it, cast it, craft it. Turn it round, flip it over. Build it up, tear it down, all the while exploring it as information and not as material. Or, at least, as a material that is overshadowed by its emphasis on information and inherent lack of sensory qualities. Recognizing the gap (and overlap) between characteristic and data, quality and info. Letting that relationship reveal meaning and expose me to value.
Perhaps the ability to process information is our newly-emerging sense. Data comes in, neurons fire: What is it? What does it mean? What does it change? Is it good? Is it valuable? Data IS a characteristic.
How should I react to it?
Perhaps the point of figuring out our environments is merely to understand our place in them, but I think, somewhere down there, we really just love having control of them. If control is too strong a proposal, then perhaps we merely seek reactions – resistance – grain. Something to push back, some tiny little sliver of dystopia that we can grapple with and figure out, or maybe not, since that’s what makes us feel human after all is said and done.
I want to play with numbers. I think I will forever be caught somewhere between child and scientist.
For a couple of much better ideas of what this might look like:
Scott Penman 