FIN DE SIÈCLE

Only an absolute fool attempts to be an apologist for the computer as an instrument of art.

No amount of persuasion will ever shake the old guard. Dead set in their beliefs, real change means, very simply, inviting personal ruin and - short of mental suicide - this is a biological impossibility.

Computer advocates - nigger lovers - differ very little from the old guard. The marriage they propose between art and the computer is preposterous and their attempts to introduce the computer in art education - pitiful. No blame. The struggle to survive and maintain the concept of art intact is a biological necessity.

Administrators, artists, and educators are engaging in tactics which they hope will save art from going the way of the dinosaurs. Pros and cons are buzzing around like flies above a semantic quagmire.

Why is it so difficult for us to accept the fact that all art is made by computing, and always has been?

Art made by computers or with the help of computers is never good or interesting just because it was made by computers or with the help of computers.

Minsky's point: there is no fundamental difference between meat machines and metal machines, both are machines that think.

But of course we all know there is a difference. In order for meat to be creative it still needs to fuck.

No doubt a healthy interest in silicon today is important.

But I say Derrida's right about one thing. There's no preparing for a future that's inconceivable and monstrous.

Paul Perry
Friday, October 13 1989

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