computer as earnest as stone

i went to japan and saw some art, or, a soft manifesto about earnest media art

This August, I went to Setouchi Art Festival in Japan, a triennial that happens on a bunch of small islands around the Seto Inland Sea.

On the islands, time and space was abundant. The entire Teshima museum had one piece of work, which was the museum itself. Bike to the top of the hill, get told the rules, take a short hike, take off your shoes, and enter a large, hollow, smooth white marble. Take a nap, spend hours looking at the water droplets race on the ground, stare into the distance, roll around a little. The sky changes its gradient so subtly it's barely noticeable.

teshima museum

Whenever I see new media art in installation form, I often play a game of “where is the computer”. There was one big exhibition in NYC where an old school was converted into a 4-story art gallery, and all the important artists working with staggering screens and pulsing lights were invited to show their work. The show was there for 3 weeks, and every room I walked into I held a secret joy of locating the Big Black Box sitting under some structure, emitting slight buzz of hard work. They were often laptops half closed, or desktops covered by some black fabrics. Ha, I found the brain! I was so proud!

On the islands, I did not care to find the computer. I was actually surprised at how many invisible computers there were. The water droplets in Teshima museum, for example, were very carefully computationally programmed. I looked at water come and go via the tiny holes on the ground with curiosity, and all I felt was childhood. One of the art houses on Naoshima has many single-digit, 7-segment clock screens scattered in water, quietly ticking from 0 to 9 in different intervals. I think they interest me the same way they interest the artist, something about patterns and time. Computational patterns, mathematical patterns, as well as earthly patterns - so simple, and so honest. And it didn't matter that they put circuits in the water! The water was a generous container sitting in the passage of time. On Oshima, there was a crying mermaid, with pearls dropping from her eyelids from time to time. I did wonder if the interval was random, whether there was a 555 timer, but what I wondered most was whether at the end of day the staff needed to pick up some of the pearls to put back into her, and how much labor there is to maintain these pieces when they were made to last. I think the earnestness of the work made the curiosity of labor feel fit.

On the islands, the computers were woven, not disguised. They did not need to pretend or hide. Now I realized that in NYC, I looked for the hidden machines because they were screaming for attention. When I read a documentation or a statement, it was often a speculation, a showcase of technical execution, or a justification of a spectacle. So I had to look for the brain, the soul, the labor - the computer disguised as something unimportant. This tendency in tech and new media art converges in galleries, institutions, "the intersection of art and technology", where so many complicated proses make up everything except purpose. WHY??? WHY DID YOU DO WHAT YOU DO??? and WHAT is it that feels important to you? Show me the human behind the scene. Show me a document of love, of passion, commitment, and things you can't bare to lose.

On the islands, much of the work that touched me were documentation of what would otherwise be lost. Artist built an entire movie theatre on Megijima, dedicated to 42nd Street theatre in NYC that she once loved and filmed. It was child-like, fantastical, kinda janky, and full of love. In the only Cafe on Oshima, a lonely island that has housed and isolated leprosy patients for almost a century, embroidered scenes recreating the stories told by patients and care-givers live vivid lives of their own. All they wrote about was "why", no matter how difficult, technical, or strange. I remembered that art could be so simple, so earnest, and it put me to tears.

oshima

But why is it that when I look at the lights shining through the carefully shaped skylight I think about computers? I want to create these subtle gradients with CSS. I want to write code that weaves sparkly patterns together. I look at the beautifully designed brochures and papers and want to put them on a website. My partner says that the museums’ inability to house new media work, alongside their lack of imagination for new media outside of traditional presentation (installation/sculpture) means that they won’t be able to represent the edge of our time. On one hand I completely agree - art and education institutions have become a symbol of stagnancy, and fall increasingly behind in this time we’re living in; yet standing on Naoshima island, I wonder if these artists who worked with stone and steel, who painted an entire art house, who meticulously collected and arranged thousands of household items into sites, who spend their life’s work meditating on “less is less”… ever cared about the edge at all? 

Modern software culture often equates ambition with virtue: scale up, disrupt, conquer the market or die trying. Overreaching ambitions create brittle systems and ever-growing complexity.

The problem is not ephemerality, but dishonesty. Pretending to solve all the problems, promising to transcend time and not decay. Wendy Chun calls this the “enduring ephemeral” - permanent in form, quick to rot. This is where I want earnestness most: What is the simplest software that's just... enough to serve and last? Softwares that build and document with care so things remain legible as they inevitably change.

Abundance only happen when things are made with the intention to last. On Naoshima, architect Tadao Ando built concrete walls, glass stairs, carved out parts of the mountain to house a couple paintings. These stones: hard, quiet, powerful, stand still to wave around people in many, many years to come.

concrete

Perhaps there is a version of computer art that also operates on the simplicity of that permanency, while acknowledging the fragility of the ephemeral. I think about permacomputing, collapse computing, chiseling messages in the stone. It's close, but I find "designing for collapse" still reactionary and anxious. It should be even simpler than that, less pessimistic - not optimistic either, just a simple love for the material, and an... ok-ness... in its past, present, and future.

Computation without ambition. Only sufficiency, humility, and focus.

One could imagine software built like stone, meant to weather time that resists both acceleration and doom. The goal is not to freeze progress but to slow it to human scale, to design for longevity and not collapse. We could imagine softwares that can be maintained with care.

Earnest computer can be simple

Earnest computer can be generous

Earnest computer can be patient

Earnest computer can be heavy

Earnest computer do not aspire

Earnest computer ages gracefully

I want an earnest computer as solid as stone