THE CRITICAL ENGINEERING MANIFESTO

0. The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.

1. The Critical Engineer considers any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a threat. The greater the dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and expose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision.

2. The Critical Engineer raises awareness that with each technological advance our techno-political literacy is challenged.

3. The Critical Engineer deconstructs and incites suspicion of rich user experiences.

4. The Critical Engineer looks beyond the 'awe of implementation' to determine methods of influence and their specific effects.

5. The Critical Engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its user, proportional to that user's dependency upon it.

6. The Critical Engineer expands 'machine' to describe interrelationships encompassing devices, bodies, agents, forces and networks.

7. The Critical Engineer observes the space between the production and consumption of technology. Acting rapidly to changes in this space, the Critical Engineer serves to expose moments of imbalance and deception.

8. The Critical Engineer looks to the history of art, architecture, activism, philosophy and invention and finds exemplary works of Critical Engineering. Strategies, ideas and agendas from these disciplines will be adopted, re-purposed and deployed.

9. The Critical Engineer notes that written code expands into social and psychological realms, regulating behaviour between people and the machines they interact with. By understanding this, the Critical Engineer seeks to reconstruct user-constraints and social action through means of digital excavation.

10. The Critical Engineer considers the exploit to be the most desirable form of exposure.



  VIA

MANIFESTO FOR A THEORY OF THE ‘NEW AESTHETIC - Curt Cloninger

Image: Image enacting the uncanny valley. This image is a New Aesthetic image. (Clement Valla, from Postcards from Google Earth, 2011)

The New Aesthetic is not new (or it has always already been perpetually new). The fact that the NA has recently hit some sort of pop-meme coagulation tipping point (and acquired an ontological name) is merely evidence that technology has finally accumulated to the point of being easily and widely recognised as a collection of Tumblr images without needing to be supported or explained by any underlying theory whatsoever. (Indeed, James Bridle's Tumblr launched the New Aesthetic meme, and Bruce Sterling's journalistic blog dispersed it.) The New Aesthetic has been intuited by hands-on coders for decades (perhaps centuries). It has been discussed by media theorists for at least as long. This is why old school media artists like Mez Breeze and old school media theorists like Simon Biggs (on old school listservs like NetBehaviour) are left fairly unimpressed with the current ‘gee whiz’ enthusiasm about the New Aesthetic. ‘The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed’ (William Gibson, in some places as early as 1993). The future is (always already) in the process of becoming ever more evenly distributed.

READ

Gonzo Futurist Manifesto

ACTION AND DECISION-MAKING FOR THE PROFESSIONAL WEIRDO. COOL READ HERE

Aids-3D

please see and read here.

in addition to please watch these videos here.

DCO2008 - Le Blog Manifesto

Some of us are here
attached to it.
the thought
should be virtualized.
A lot of phenomena
needs discussion
or formulas.
blog,blog,blog.
thoughts
and even worse.
we should be attached to it
and emotional.
Playing with sublime
rupture.
we are searching for balance
between eternity and rubish.
partly magic, partly childish play.
whats depending on us
is appeal,
expression,
precision,
opinion,
contents,
appearing,
and language.
Some success,
some misunderstanding.
We try to link,
what there is!
Soon after we reject
everything.
failure,
but no gesture.
attention but no
mimic.
Light,Sound,Signs.
We must not miss its emotional potentialities.
What a chance!