<thingist> Demagogues in light of the WTC

[Peter von Brandenburg]

Dear Frederic & al,

Thanks for the extremely generous post.  ^_~

> I do not perceive either nn or mez as more of an avatar as anyone of us.
> Online persona, perhaps, would be a better term for those. At no moment have I seen either of those persons communicate otherwise than under their adopted online names and, to some extent, style even in private conversation (this in itself is a whole box of threads as it seems that no online correspondence can be safely understood as private anymore and that is not because of carnivore echelon and their ilk but rather by the dispersion of common sense aka netiquette).

Mez is not & cannot be an Avatar, she merely uses what we've come to think of as "avataric" forms.  I see this as simply another form of heroic utterance.  I have re'd to the one voice which uses all these different masks (to her if no one else) as POET.  I clearly see A-O/NN as another matter.  It's about identity, how many one has & what the correspondence (or lack thereof) is to ones off-line i.d.

> In what way can those be cornered as avatar and not, say, a person that is known to all as Blackhawk or another as Biti, a third as porculus, and last but not least, a so called Frederic Madre ?
> how different are "patrick lichty" and voyd at voyd.com ? totally apart and absolutely the same at once. One meat-meet with Dr. Joseph Nechvatal is pudding proof of this and I won't let myself enter a debate about 'the other' and 'the self', this is for fresh out of school artists or the grey haired acamedics who taught them.

No need to go there at all but this is not about "complexicating" simple things either.  Doc's on-line & off-line personae are as different as I've ever encountered, but that doesn't mean the on-line voice is that of an Avatar.  Conversely I've been told that my on-line & off-line personae are very, very similar... so what?  Can we define our terms here?  For me, an "Avatar" is a synthetic or constructed personality which has its own virtual history &/or b/g or "life story".  I contrast this w/ a synthetic or constructed *voice* which may have only a temporary identity (maybe only so long as to make a single post & then be discarded) which I re to as a "Phantom".  The key is that the utterance of an Avatar or Phantom is AUTHORED.  It is premeditated, it is not merely a fancy word for a dialogical form of adr.  It is literature-in-being, often in real-time.  The "in-being" part makes if fine art.

> mez, nn, you and me are not avatars. they are us (respectively, ok ?).
> it all comes down to style. we are recognized by our styles, or we are not recognized and ackowledged if we have none. This bothers the styleless who can only survive this economy of attention by trying to pinpoint (and bitch about) the elements of the style of others, looking to ridicule it as 'just style'. (now there was a fast link to ted byfield here, I'm short circuiting it for the sake of keeping to what matters). now, when I read this kind of comment: "nn's conversation is not much different from most bad translation software" it makes me not only wary because I have read it so many times before (and it was already challenged by others x times that) but because it shows a definite lack of curiosity. anyone that has actually read 3 posts by nn knows that there is opinion aplenty in there and that those opinions, more importantly than the form they take, are what gives nn a recognizable style. Those who constantly denigrate her (please notice that I do not say 'her work',!
>  a term that I despise) do it because she challenges their comfortable vision of the world as I like her because we share much of the same vision and a lust for the abrasive power of humor against the lap dogs of the establishment.

Opinions which are purely the function or vector of style are not things which need to be read on a regular basis.  Once, twice, three times perhaps to acquaint oneself w/ them & then maybe periodically thereafter to make sure that nothing has changed.  Style which animates opinions can make for "stylish writing".  Opinion which animates style makes for masturbation.  If a person has no significant existence besides their on-line utterance then I agree that there is little functional difference between such a "real" voice & the voice of an Avatar... but still that doesn't make the speaker an Avatar if it is simply their "routine" utterance.  Therefore when it comes to A-O/NN you & TB are of completely differing opinions.  If you are right she is not an Avatar, if he is right, she is.  We've had a similar discussion about Porky also I seem to recall.  If it's an Avatar then the text is indeed "their work", if it isn't then as you say it's "just them".

> I find nn speak emulators totally ridiculous. there is only one person that can produce her kind of output and that is her.

Whereas TB feels only *several* people can produce it.

> as for, "the nn syndicate idea" to be "common currency" (<sigh> indeed, biti) it is again a detour to thought prompted recently (this rumour can be traced back probably to a year or a year and a half ago) by her being represented at various conferences by "rented bodies" other people who are there to physically impersonate her: real world avatars. It is also a way to minimize her perceived output.

& to you such a performance is not someone's "work"?  I find that difficult to credit.

> I do not see why it is so impossible to think that nn is just one nice 23 year old girl, out there in amsterdam writing music software, reading books and watching nouvelle vague movies in the seclusion of her apartment. rich, bored and educated: I swallow it hook and sinker. and I love her green spiky shirt.

TB's argument, as much as I got from it, boiled down to volume & timing.  I pointed out to him that neither of these were nec issues & that when he said, "humans need to sleep", I reminded him that msgs could be queued for delayed posting but this didn't sway him.  Surely he must know this is possible so at that point I became somewhat lost.

> What I see is that the expression of individuality thru stubborn dedication to style is a threat to the well-minded defenders of the lowest denominator consensus. the status quo is so rewarding to the feeble minded.

"Stubborn" or "pathological"?  I've heard BB on the subj make it sound like it's something akin to art-therapy.

> sure, ted byfield knows about this... next thing you know he's going to say that it is bin laden that attacked the wtc towers!

I take it you mean "in person"...

> I assume that she sits now a huge library of mail fodder: ascii drawings, a history of sig files, poetry, excerpts from books, fan mail, hate mail and she can copy-paste it into newly formed comunications adding new stuff all the time. i'd be interested to know if this library is organized in some way or if she relies on memory, but this is only petty detail. there is also a constant re-utilization of personal mail that she receives and it is often that one can see bits of their stuff appearing inside her posts, regurgiated as is.

I don't know, this idea of "a life as process" is eerily similar to a prescription for "outsider art" & that invariably puts the subject either on a pedestal or under glass (as I recently had cause to write about something completely different).

> then what would he understand about nn ?

Politics, psychology, dialogical forms seen purely as literature?  I don't know TB well enuf to either defend or attack him.

> last, I would add that if tb is certain that nn is a collective it adds to the evidence that she is not.

Some day I will get to the bottom of this particular feud...

best,

Blackhawk.