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Brian Massumi, Detlef Mertins, Lars Spuybroek, Noortje Marres, Christian Hübler, Gilbert Simondon, et al. Interact or Die! Design: Joke Brouwer, Illustrated (colour), Paperback, sewn, 208 pages, Size: 16.0 x 23.0 cm In association with V2_Publishing
We all know that blueprints and plans for the future have been rendered obsolete, since nobody can predict or control processes like climate change or global flows of employment, fugitives and information. The interesting question now is what kind of exploratory behaviour we can come up with to create functioning networks – networks in which changes and flows can interactively select those that are most vital – and to find out what our role might be in this process of producing variation and selection. Exploratory behaviour is the pragmatic approach to the possibilities and problems of globalization. It is is also a pragmatic means of finding a vital form for interactive art. A network becomes operational and effective only when it becomes interactive, and interactivity is a material process with structural consequences, whether the networks involved are biological, social, political, artistic, technical or electronic. Artists are pre-eminently placed to test, stretch, expand, twist and recombine matter into artistic forms and structures. In Interact or Die! the exploratory behaviour of artists is combined with essays by prominent authors in the area of ‘networks-intomatter’ and ‘matter-into-networks’ theory, such as Peter Corning, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart, Noortje Marres, Brian Massumi, Detlef Mertins, Arjen Mulder, Gilbert Simondon, Lars Spuybroek and others. |
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The 1990s dream of cyberspace and its immaterial possibilities belongs to the distant past: our future will be material for some time to come. Matter rules, but modern biology has shown that matter is far from inert; it is ‘self-organizing’, ‘epigenetic’ and ‘transductive’ – three terms that are explored in this collection of essays and artistic interventions.