Hi Max,
given the thread regarding epic net art, do you feel that Genius 2000 is epic and why or why not?

Eric

I'm not really sure! On balance it is more fragmentary and theoretical than epics seem to be. Possibly there is a slim comparison to Bertolt Brecht's idea of "epic theater," which I found interesting in college in 1987 from reading his play "Galileo." Maybe some pseudo- or quasi-epic elements or references but overall not an epic.

Max, if I'm not wrong, this is the ninth year of the project.
Is that correct?

Hello All,

Not sure where this will nest but today is my last day to post until the conference. I'll post a couple more remarks later this evening, to sum up some other conference issues, then will be offlist till September.

Best regards,

Max Herman

http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html

I think Bartleby.com is a very relevant website. You could wonder if people read the great works of English literature more, now that they are on the internet for free, or less, because other very habit-forming activities are also available, which studies now show cause the brain itself to be less inclined toward reading. We could look at all cultural activities in the age of computer networks with a recognition of this puzzling situation.

T.S. Eliot, for all his shortcomings, addresses some interesting points in this essay I think. I don't see anything extremely difficult about it, and I imagine the observations in it would be refreshing to most people. For example, he writes "what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it." I think this is a good observation in showing that even before computer networks, all works of art in the tradition or storehouse are connected.

I have also long been fond of this passage on the poet as artist proper: "he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period." There is a causality or a too-directly causal connection that will never do. You've got to think about the overall picture and not be too keen on success by a false mold. Just like marginal utility decreases as you get more and more production in a mature pattern, there's a correction phase too.

I suppose the interesting question of "what to do in the circumstances" is a pervasive theme, and goes to Hamlet's famous speech about "to be or not to be" as well as Buddha's reflections, the Heisenberg principle, and many other interesting thoughtful contemplations. Eliot says many things in this essay which strike one as having some of the less admirable tendencies of the 20th century, but his criticism of Wordsworth can't be completely dismissed. "And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living."

This is a similar idea to what Benjamin says about the present in which some aspect of the past comes to life, or as Eliot might say wonderful messages from the past are not ignored but rather appreciated properly. This is a type of network that gets overshadowed by technical equipment, but is very central when you observe like Medawar that our evolutionary material is fragile and destructible (books and statues) not all-permeating like a gene pool.

For these and other reasons, I think it's proper to look back a little bit on the very wonderful person of Shakespeare, and think "By gum how does this relate and inform today, me and my life?" So that's the topic for this year!

Best regards,

Max Herman