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In The Reeler this week Paddy Johnson reviews the movie 8 BIT, opening Saturday at the Museum of Modern Art. I'm in the film yakking a lot so this will be 8-Bit Week here at the blog. I'll post some back-and-forth email Johnson and I had re: the review (with her kind permission), and will give my own biased perspective on the film. Johnson notes that it's "the first movie of its kind to document and situate the 8-bit scene within contemporary art discourse," and quotes me as saying "the DIY (do it yourself), hacker, guerrilla mindset is a constant theme... One thing I like about the film is it casts its net wider than just a small scene." Meaning it encompasses a variety of lo-fi strategies for using the computer as an art making tool.
But what exactly does "8-bit" mean? In computing it can connote "small," "low res," or "old"--the second meaning interests me the most. Wikipedia says: "In computer architecture, 8-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are at most 8 bits (1 octet) wide. [...] The Z80 and the MOS Technology 6502 8-bit CPUs were widely used in home computers and game consoles of the 1970s and '80s. Many 8-bit CPUs or microcontrollers are the basis of today's ubiquitous embedded systems.
"There are 28 (256) possible permutations for 8 bits.
"About 55% of all CPUs sold in the world are 8-bit microcontrollers or microprocessors."
It's about doing a lot with a little to reach the most, as I see it.
MOMA 8 BIT page
8 BIT website
image above is a detail from the poster by eBoy.
Digby has a good post about the "real reason the US is in Iraq," based on revelations from Bob Woodward's new book State of Denial. As we all know, VP Cheney and SecDef Rumsfeld were higher-ups in the Gerald Ford administration at the time the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam. Believing, as an article of faith, that the defeat was a result of hippies and "liberal media propaganda" and nothing else, these warped old specimens waited twenty-five years for the chance to get back into power to "do Vietnam right." "Getting back in power" meant biding their time until someone as limited mentally as the younger Bush got in office.
This all rings true to me. I know some people who come from the so-called "Silent Generation" of the '50s who believe everything wrong with America can be traced to the '60s counterculture: they viewed Clinton as a bong-smoking libertine and welcomed Bush Junior as the second coming of solid Christian values. No amount of evidence of Republican corruption (Enron, Abramoff), incompetence (the war in Iraq), skankiness (Mark Foley), etc. will ever convince these folks that the Republicans aren't the party of the angels. And no evidence of the good that came out of the counterculture (tolerance, civil rights, environmental awareness) will ever convince them that "dirty hippies" aren't the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world.
We could feel sorry for them, but unfortunately their kind shows no sign of voluntarily relaxing its grip on power, so I'm afraid we must hate them, at least until they admit they were wrong about everything and promise to behave. It sounds "intolerant," but these people are scary.
A theorist who spoke in connection with the "Low Grade/Fuzzy Logic" show I was in summer before last is cyberfeminist Sadie Plant, who is probably better known in the UK than the US. I found these online notes on her book Zeroes and Ones to be pretty helpful. Apologies to Michael Connor, one of the "Fuzzy" co-curators, who I was talking to last night: the theorist Plant discusses at length is Luce Irigaray, not Julia Kristeva.
Jim Henley on the McCain Torture Act, just passed by the US Congress:
In many ways the military commissions bill is designed as a Get Out of Jail Free card as much as a plan for the future. It’s designed to indemnify government officials and employees against criminal prosecution in US courts for acts they’ve already committed, ordered or approved. And that’s all well and good for escaping prosecution in the US courts. But British officials have to answer to British and European Union law. The Hague is not going to care that the US Congress decided to arbitrarily define away much of settled international law on the treatment of prisoners. I’ve already suggested that this trap still waits [for] American officials once some foreign court wants to spring it, but for officials in other countries it’s a more pressing worry.
A previous post on computer geeks riffing on Jackson Pollock has been revised, with various editorial changes and the addition of a more Pollocklike Pollock image from jacksonpollock.org.
"Debating" America's "right" to grab citizens of other countries, hold them indefinitely without trial, torture them, and use secret evidence against them (it's all in the congressional pipeline at the moment), Senator Hillary Clinton just called al Qaeda "evil and nihilistic."
This recalls John Goodman's immortal line in The Big Lebowsky: "Nihilists? Fuck me. Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
Al Qaeda isn't a group of German punks who dress like Kraftwerk. They're militant Islamics who want the US out of Muslim countries. As we all learned a few years ago, they use extreme means not to our liking--as if the US never killed civilians en masse, in sickeningly grisly ways. As for "evil," we know where she got that word. The idiot in chief uses it all the time. Or "idiot"--to quote a recent TV news caption. It's not very helpful for problem solving.
Senator Diane Feinstein refers to the "problem" our government faces of how to "prosecute al Qaeda detainees for war crimes." Since we're not really at war with any nation right now (Iraq, you say? But didn't we invade to help them?), these people are not ours to kidnap and just hold--they have to be prosecuted by the countries where they are citizens. Or extradited to us for trial. Sucks, but it's called "international law."
Update: Just noticed that both New Jersey senators, Menendez and Lautenberg, ostensibly Democrats, voted for the McCain Torture Act. Wtf?