The police forces were created to protect property and 'the system', not people, and that's what they continue to do.
https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the...
People Staring at Computers (2021)
11–20 of 130 posts
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#12> Especially the parts where I chastise, "look, we've gotten so wrapped up in all these computers we have forgotten about the real people around us". Like one of those cafe signs that says "we don't have wifi, talk to each other, pretend it's 1995". I think this cynical, dismissive attitude towards networked technology was popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Now I can see I was just parroting it.
You aren't "parroting" a thing if you're feeling it. Sometimes a thing is part of our collective Zeitgeist because we all feel it, feel it's wrong.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#13I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The artist seems pretentious, but self-aware. Annoying, but a great storyteller. The art and philosophical conclusions involved are dated and cliché but thought provoking at the same time. It's irritating, exciting, and comforting all at once. I don't know what to make of it but I'm glad that people like the author exist.
Agreed, I would have really liked the paintings by themselves with minimal context. But this kind of pretentious artíst archetype seems like its designed to alienate most people from visual art rather than invite them in. And even though I really love the paintings, they don't embody all the fancy ideas he's going on (and on) about in this write up. You're cool and smart, we get it. The paintings can and should speak for themselves.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#14> Especially the parts where I chastise, "look, we've gotten so wrapped up in all these computers we have forgotten about the real people around us". Like one of those cafe signs that says "we don't have wifi, talk to each other, pretend it's 1995". I think this cynical, dismissive attitude towards networked technology was popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Now I can see I was just parroting it. You aren't "p…
Also, I don't think that this sentiment has gone out of fashion at all.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#15I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The artist seems pretentious, but self-aware. Annoying, but a great storyteller. The art and philosophical conclusions involved are dated and cliché but thought provoking at the same time. It's irritating, exciting, and comforting all at once. I don't know what to make of it but I'm glad that people like the author exist.
Agreed, I would have really liked the paintings by themselves with minimal context. But this kind of pretentious artíst archetype seems like its designed to alienate most people from visual art rather than invite them in. And even though I really love the paintings, they don't embody all the fancy ideas he's going on (and on) about in this write up. You're cool and smart, we get it. The paintings can and should speak…
Nobody made you read an artist's blog. It seems disengenous to go voluntarily read someone's writing then criticize them for writing and not "letting their work speak for itself"
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#16I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The artist seems pretentious, but self-aware. Annoying, but a great storyteller. The art and philosophical conclusions involved are dated and cliché but thought provoking at the same time. It's irritating, exciting, and comforting all at once. I don't know what to make of it but I'm glad that people like the author exist.
Agreed, I would have really liked the paintings by themselves with minimal context. But this kind of pretentious artíst archetype seems like its designed to alienate most people from visual art rather than invite them in. And even though I really love the paintings, they don't embody all the fancy ideas he's going on (and on) about in this write up. You're cool and smart, we get it. The paintings can and should speak…
It helps to consider the pretentious artistry as part of the piece. The writing about his experience doing the piece, and the experiences themselves are more interesting than the piece itself and need not be separate criteria.
It's okay for most people to be alienated by it. They are neither wrong nor right to be so: I'm just happy that this art form exists.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#17The police forces were created to protect property and 'the system', not people, and that's what they continue to do. https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the...
> The police forces were created to protect property and 'the system', not people, and that's what they continue to do.
I think it's rather naive to consider otherwise. Somewhere along the way we were fed this childish mythology about the importance of the individual, which is definitely captivating, stirring one's imagination with sparks of creativity, but the truth is that institutions and 'the system' are the bedrock of civilization and thus society. Fanciful thoughts of some anarcho-libertarian ideal state are cute, but much farther down the list of priorities than the continued function of the machinery of civilization, on which everything depends. And the enforcement required so that state continues is liberally allotted to almost every government agency.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#18I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The artist seems pretentious, but self-aware. Annoying, but a great storyteller. The art and philosophical conclusions involved are dated and cliché but thought provoking at the same time. It's irritating, exciting, and comforting all at once. I don't know what to make of it but I'm glad that people like the author exist.
I met Kyle when he taught a OpenFrameworks workshop here in Toronto many years ago. He's not a pretentious guy at all. He seemed very chill and down to earth, and just deeply curious with a highly competent ability to use programming as a tool to investigate questions. I admired his steely patience trying to teach that workshop while a couple folks kept interrupting while they struggled installing the prerequisite tools.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#19> "Ok. Is there anyone else in the house?" > "No sir." > They opened up two doors and found my roommates sleeping. "Who is this?" > "Oh, those are my roommates." I didn't realize it was 8 am. I was up late the night before, and I figured it was ten or eleven already, and that they had left for work. That's making false statements, a felony punishable by up to five years in federal prison.
It's worth highlighting that it doesn't seem as though this caused any issue whatsoever for the author.
Had the government wanted to give him a harder time than they did, it could've been a significant issue.
FBI agents are trained in interrogation techniques designed to manipulate you into saying contradictory things, for the sole purpose of being able to slap you with a false-statements charge in case they can't get enough on you to convict you of the crime they were actually investigating.
Re: People Staring at Computers (2021)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a felony to knowingly give false statements, meaning to lie.
But then you have a case where the officer will try and use what you said against you. So, even if it wasn’t knowingly in truth, in practice it will be up to you to defend that truth. Whereas silence saves you the hassle.
In practice, good-faith and respectful interactions with law enforcement have a positive outcome.