Against Nature

[This is a catalogue essay written for Daniel Della-Bosca's exhibition Untouched Histories held at Logan Art Gallery, Queensland from 6th August to 13th September 2014.]

Daniel Della-Bosca, Factitious, 2014

It is in our nature to be against nature. Our subjectivity as humans has often been predicated on our opposition to the natural world. Our efficacy as a civilisation is wholly proportional to the degree of power we exert over the natural world in terms of both knowledge and literal destruction. It is a fact that without the wholesale assault we have waged on the environment to extract precious metals, we would not enjoy the level of technological advances that we do, nor would we have access to the highly technically complex devices that have become common, ubiquitous elements of everyday life. What is most fascinating about this process however is that such technologies, in their ubiquity, have become so iconic of our modernity that their origins in the natural landscape has been long forgotten. But also hidden beneath this signification is the technological complexity that enables these devices to function at all. This is a complexity however, that is not at all unique to technological systems and networks but also an omnipresent feature of the natural world itself

In Untouched Histories, Daniel Della-Bosca confronts the paradox of simultaneous technological and natural complexity through a series of images, objects, animations and holograms. His forms occupy a strange space in our consciousness, they are at once familiar and strange, organic and synthetic, natural and technical, real and virtual. But crucially rather than settle at one side of the binary, the forms problematise the very possibility of the binary. Complexity requires a far more, vast dimensionality than a binary opposition will permit. Della-Bosca’s deployment of fractal mathematics in the creation of his forms provides sufficient context for complexity to be encountered in a meaningful way.

Daniel Della-Bosca, A Delicate Moment, 2014
Inkjet Print on Rag Paper

 Fractal geometry has a reputation of being overly and unnecessarily complex, and that it should be left to geeks and scientists. This is based on the assumption that complexity, particularly the complexity of nature, is something that should be overcome, a problem to be solved. But in actual fact we all experience, engage with, and are likely fascinated by fractal forms every day of our lives. Complexity is something that is easy, if not natural, to experience but difficult to think about, perhaps because our thinking is based on classical linear systems and Cartesian dualism. We already have the capacity to apprehend fractal complexity on a tacit level, but our perception is polluted by certain aspects the very everyday life the classical systems were designed to understand.

The French cultural theorist Paul Virilio uses this trope of pollution to formulate his argument for a “grey ecology” which addresses the impact of speed, or “the acceleration of reality through new technologies” as the “pollution of time and distance” which he sees as “much more severe… than the pollution of material substances.”[1] Modelled on the “green ecology” that concerns nature, Virilio calls for a “grey ecology” that concerns the techno-cultural sphere. The important aspect of Virilio’s argument is that despite the colour differentiation of green and grey ecologies they are not necessarily treated as entirely separate spheres of the natural and the techno-cultural. Conversely, they are in fact united in their characterisation as “ecologies”. This implies that a green ecology is only one part of the ecological spectrum, and in Virilio’s view, the concerns of a grey ecology have as much, if not more of an impact on the world than a green ecology. One is not a model of the other, they are part of the same ecological continuum, subject to the same threats of polluting forces.

Daniel Della-Bosca, Uncatalogued Thing, 2014
Inkjet Print on Metallic Paper

Virilio’s transgression of ecological binaries opens up a more complex mode of understanding concepts of ‘technology’ and ‘nature’. The natural forms, such as clouds, in Della-Bosca’s work are not invoked to serve as binary points from which the fractal forms can act as examples of technological imitations of nature, or even for indexically drawing out similarities between the natural and the technological. Such an approach to this work would rely on the outdated binary of real versus virtual, nature versus technology, green versus grey. The forms are entities in themselves, not of nature or technology, but both. Or more accurately, they do not operate on the assumption that there are similarities between the two spheres, but on the fact that they are not even entirely discrete. Increasingly the concept of nature as something other to the processes and objects of human evolution is becoming outdated. Della-Bosca’s forms demonstrate that technology and nature exhibit self-similarities, not because they are discrete spheres but because they exist on the same fractal trajectory.

Fractal form effortlessly traverses both green and grey ecologies because it is in fact a fundamental characteristic of both. It is more than a mere coincidence that the same geometries that feature in the natural world are used to understand the behaviour and structure of complex digital networks and indeed to design them.[2] The organic/synthetic tension that Della-Bosca’s forms evoke, or the simultaneously green and grey space they occupy in our perceptual taxonomies, is in fact a natural state for them by virtue of the fact that their fractal substrate is an anathema to the limited dimensionality of such taxonomies. There is only tension or confusion if we rely on outdated linearity and dualism. The work in Untouched Histories should therefore not be met as an intellectual challenge to be overcome, or a cryptic mystery to be solved. In the same way that we don’t need a functioning knowledge of fractal geometry to be mesmerised by cloud formations or coastal topographies viewed from the window of a plane, we respond to Della-Bosca’s forms with our bodies and not our intellect. Our bodies are both the mortal organic reminder that we are part of nature and also the point at which nature morphs into technology.

Daniel Della-Bosca, Where Wishes Are Woven, 2014
Inkjet Print on Metallic Paper

To be ‘against nature’ remains, therefore, a positive position from which to anchor conceptions of human subjectivity. Not however as it has been traditionally understood and practiced as a violent and exploitative expression of power and knowledge, but as a rejection of the concept of a discrete object, entity, state or idea of ‘the natural world’. As soon as we name something ‘nature’ it becomes something other, something which can be differentiated from, something which can be opposed. Something which is not us by definition is far more vulnerable than something which is part of us. Language (including this essay), of course, fails the task of adequate engagement with these issues, but intelligent artistic interrogation of them as offered here in Untouched Histories goes some way to giving us an experiential sense of the nature of our activities with nature, in nature, and as nature.

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[1] Paul Virilio, Grey Ecology, trans. Drew Burk (New York: Atropos, 2009), 26.

[2] Chaoming Song, Shlomo Havlin and Hernán A. Makse, “Self-similarity of Complex Networks”, Nature, 433 (2005): 392-395

These paintings will make you question why you even look at the internet.

Pawel Kuczynski is an artist who specialises in the bleeding obvious. His images make you think about the exact statement they make and not much else. The problems of the world are illustrated with such masterful use of irony, visual metaphor, cliché, and literality that you barely need to look at them, because you’ve already seen them in your mind. Inequality, for example is represented by pictures of things that are not equal, a politician talking shit is represented by a picture of politician talking shit, global warming is represented by polar ice melting into the sea and the penguins have nooses around their necks just in case you have only just received sight through miracle surgery yesterday.

But whatever, just share it already because it fits with your progressive values of standing up against injustice, capitalism, and thinking. When you finally figure out that all those Asians dropping presents in chimneys isn’t a racist suggestion that Asians are like elves, but actually means that all your Christmas presents are made in China, or somewhere, you can nod your head and agree that you both are geniuses. Your aptitude for understanding art has proved to be akin to your ability to name a country beginning with the letter ‘e’. HA! “bet you can’t” the post said, but they didn’t count on the genius of visual culture that you are.

Just look at the that guy stuck in his house looking through the Facebook ‘f’ as if it were a periscope, he has no idea how much Facebook prevents him from seeing the real world. Quick, share it before your friends all end up like him! And that ATM as an altar, complete with bible just so we’re clear, will really get up the noses of your religious friends, if they can decipher the image that is.

You GET these works, it makes you feel smart to look at them, and your dumb right-wing friends can just take a dose of the picture of the fat rich mouse using the poor mouse as bait for his cat-chariot. Capitalism is so evil and the best way to let people know is by sharing these pictures so they click on the link and go to the site, ensuring that advertising revenue is raised, and ads have audiences. Wow, art really can change the world.

How much is word worth? Value in a virtual world

On May 22nd this year, a listing appeared on eBay that offered the word 'the' "handwritten with blue ballpoint pen, on a torn piece of Reflex A4 paper" for auction. Bids exceeded AU$60000 within a week but before a transaction could be made, eBay pulled the listing citing a breach of the sales terms and conditions. The breach occurred, eBay argued, against their "No Item Policy" within which they "inferred that there’s no actual item for sale" in the seller’s listing. The item, however, was clearly photographed and described in the listing.

After negotiations, and some reverberations across social media and news websites, the item was re-listed with a revised description and a personal guarantee that half the proceeds would be donated to the Cancer Council of Australia. Bidding began again at $0.99 and reached AU$20300 with 15 hours remaining as of the morning of June 1st. However, just as the seller and the Cancer Council were set to become $10000 better off, eBay again removed the listing citing another, but different breach of the terms and conditions.

The second breach is less specific than the first and relates to the auction site's "concerns" about the seller's selling activity, stating to the seller in an email informing him of the suspension of his account, that: "We’re not comfortable with your selling practices or business model." Given that this is the seller’s first sale on eBay, this assumption can only be based on the listing of 'the'. Further negotiations ensued but no resolution where the seller could redeem the $20300 raised could be reached. This is in spite of the fact that there were at least two established eBay stores with good feedback making legitimate bids of thousands of dollars on the item.

This stand-off between eBay and the seller exposes a number of tensions related to online transactions and digital culture more generally. The theoretical trope of ‘the virtual’ was a popular metaphor used to discuss the nature of digital technology around the turn of the 21st century but has, for the most part, become less appropriate as we become more comfortable with the role that digital technology plays in our everyday lives today. The metaphor of virtuality often implied a sense of loss of materiality at the hands of digital, but as this case proves the now dated binary of real and virtual, based on the assumption that the digital is immaterial, is not as clear cut as we once assumed.

The seller, Sean Powderly who goes by the eBay username, 'sweatyman', was given an assurance from eBay after the first removal that the new listing would not be in any danger of removal. The removal nevertheless occurred and fallout will no doubt play out through social media and other news outlets which eBay would surely expect. But why they would want to be seen to be denying the Cancer Council a $10000 donation in that same context is a little baffling.

What, then, is being protected here? Why the effort and risk of social media backlash to stamp out what was to become both an act of charity and reward for an original idea? If eBay can sell intangible objects such as an air guitar for US$5.50 or the "The Meaning of Life" for US$3.26, or even tangible objects with inflated value like a grilled cheese sandwich with markings that apparently resembled the Virgin Mary for US$28000, then why not a torn piece of paper inscribed with the word 'the'?

The answer has to do with value itself. The air guitar and "The Meaning of Life" are really unproblematic because of the low prices achieved. The Virgin toastie has an absurd value but we have learned to forgive a little irrationality when it comes to religion. The seemingly disproportionate cash value that has been ascribed to this piece of paper, however, rings alarm bells for some reason. Arguments about the ascription of value to objects are not new, particularly in the art world where a 1961 work by Italian artist Peiro Manzoni, entitled Artist's Shit -- which is exactly that, Manzoni's own excrement sealed in a can -- sold at a Sotheby's auction for €124000. And Powderly has been called an artist by at least one news outlet. But the case of Manzoni is relevant because while his work can be seen as an example of institutional critique, poking fun at the absurdity of arbitrarily ascribed value in the art market, it can also be seen as a more deeply critical engagement with the politicisation of monetary value within the world economy.

Piero Manzoni, Artist's Shit, 1961

When Manzoni first canned and sold his excrement he did so according to the price of gold at the time. The price of each can therefore fluctuated with the market value of gold. The market forces that govern how much gold is worth at any one time are as arbitrary as the value ascribed to a work of art or any object for that matter, including a piece of paper, even if it is paper money. Money itself is virtual, it is "simply a set of ideas" based on the agreement of the two parties engaged in the exchange, as economist, Felix Martin explains. Martin discusses how new digital currencies like Bitcoin are no more virtual than so-called "real" money because a real note is simply a token of "transferable credit"... "you can't actually see or touch a pound or a dollar - rather than a pound coin or a dollar bill - any more than you can see or touch a Bitcoin."

Bitcoin as Martin points out is not new in its virtuality but operates on essentially the same principle as real money. The idea that it is a virtual currency stems solely from the assumption that its state as digital money is physically different to that of paper money. Physically different they may be, but they both share virtuality as an inherent trait. And, right now at least, both are valid for various online transactions for goods and services.

There may in fact be undisclosed legal reasons why a $20000 transaction for a piece of paper has been unceremoniously killed off by eBay, but on the surface it seems that, in that same way that nature abhors a vacuum, eBay cannot tolerate the virtual accumulation of value beyond their own control. Real auction houses have a high degree of control over how much works of art sell for. That is, how much virtual value they accumulate. In fact this is the primary function of auction houses like Sotheby’s, with their regular headline making 'highest price paid for...' sales. As a digital auction house, eBay's operation is a little more chaotic than the tightly controlled environment of a Sotheby’s auction. Nevertheless, it appears as if eBay is attempting to exact some kind of control over something that is beyond their control, beyond anyone’s control – the value of a piece of paper. The refusal to rectify the removal of the second listing of 'the' is a refusal to grant it any sense of legitimacy. Such an acknowledgement would be an admission of a loss of that control.

Perhaps eBay thought that the second listing would not attract the same level of interest, perhaps they assumed that the worthless but expensive piece of paper would die an unproblematic death, perhaps the market would take care of it as it does everything else in our capitalist society. But what is certain, and what this piece of paper has demonstrated, is that value is arbitrary, value is political, and value, digital or otherwise, is virtual.

Burying Dig, Exhuming Nostalgia

Having graduated from high school in 1994 I currently find myself on the downhill side of my 30s, and not so coincidentally I also find myself squarely at the centre of the target market of what used to be known as the ABC's Dig Music but will henceforth be referred to as Double J.

1994 was also the year Kurt Cobain died and all this talk about it being the 20th anniversary of his death this year just makes that slide toward 40 seem ever more steep. But this is a feeling I get often, like that time just a few years ago, me and some guys from school were at a party. We were among the older people at this party, the majority were in their early 20s, us approaching mid-30s. Strangely though, our music tastes were aptly catered for: Pavement, Superchunk, Pixies, Sonic Youth, et al. These songs that I had grown up with, were now accompanied by the inane self-congratulatory tones of the 20-somethings, squeaking giddily as if they'd discovered it without a thought for the age of the music or the age of the other people in the room. I wanted to storm over and switch it off and yell 'Nam veteran style, "YOU DON"T KNOW, YOU WEREN'T THERE, MAAAAN!". But out of respect for their ignorance of bands like of My Chemical Romance and Kings of Leon, I decided to just leave them to it. We went home, put Bubble and Scrape on and proclaimed loudly, "They can take our Pavement, they can take our Pixies, BUT THEY'LL NEVER TAKE OUR SEBADOH!" A friend, much more eloquent than I, wrote at the time that she felt her monkey had gone to heaven. And indeed it had.

I’m hopefully less self-righteous and rude these days. I kind of need to be, because for the last six months I've been informed by ads with increasing frequency that Dig Music was "now powered by Triple J". The playlist changed quite dramatically, I was all of a sudden hearing all the bands that I loved in 1994, which I of course still have in my collection. Bands like Pavement, Sebadoh, Sonic Youth, The Pixies, even Mudhoney, were appearing more frequently, I'm sure, than they ever did on Triple J in the actual 90s when they still represented the raw edge of popular rock. We used to call it "indie" then without ever really knowing why or how exactly to define it. Nevertheless, all five of these bands are still producing music in different capacities and qualities and of course Dig has also been playing their new stuff; Sebadoh and ex-Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus's new band have had feature albums as has Mogwai and Julia Holter who segue nicely into that mix. So much so that I felt a little guilty and uneasy that my taste was being catered for so astutely and consistently.

But I also felt uneasy for other reasons. Sure, I like the new Malkmus, the new Sebadoh isn't terrible either, but I just feel a little bit embarrassed when some of those 90s songs come on, a little bit like somebody has publicly posted some of my bad high school poetry on Facebook. This is partly because the music you like in your teenage years becomes intensely personal for any number of reasons. But it's also because much of it speaks so clearly of that time that it's really hard to just transport them seamlessly into the present. Helen Razer said as much writing about Kurt Cobain's death and the way his music hasn't travelled so well on the long journey from the 90s.

But this isn't really my point. Dig Music has spent the last few months asking us what kind of station we want the new Dig to be, what music do we want it to play, do we want presenters or not, and even what we think of the name. All of our responses from official surveys, social media comments, and the "dig it" buttons with which we could indicate when we liked a song (sadly there was no bury it button), were apparently all compiled into a neat little statement that said we wanted pretty much what they had been giving us for the last six months but that we want a presenter some of the time, and we want it to be called Double J. I have no evidence to back this up but I can be pretty certain not a single Dig listener would have suggested that name, and even though Dig hints at a very strong vote towards the negative in relation to the question of presenters, this has been qualified as just not wanting them "24/7".

One does have to wonder, though, why they needed to go to all of the trouble of surveys and "dig it" buttons if they were just going to change the station into what they had already changed it into. It's no coincidence that an ad playing in the lead up to the change to Double J that ran the tagline "playing the best new music from Australia and overseas, plus the songs and artists that shaped your life", turns out to be the exact conclusion that Dig has reached after analysing all the data from the surveys and social media complaints about the new playlist.

There are only two possible reasons for this outcome. One is that they are genuine when they say that this is indeed the result of the surveys, which is still ridiculous because audiences had been being given a vigorous 90s priming in the months prior. But the second, and more likely, outcome is that they just completely ignored the data, or just pretended to collect it in the first place and were always going to be Triple-J-in-the-nineties regardless of what "we" said. However, I am actually in favour of this second outcome on a strategic level, just not so much with the playlist that has resulted, and I probably wouldn't have bothered with the surveys either. If Dig relied on us, the public, to dictate what they would play the results would be unlistenable. Just like the movie Snakes on Plane (which incorporated pre-release input from fans generated through internet hype, into the final film) is unwatchable, just like the people's choice award winner at art prize exhibitions is always rubbish, and just like the way focus groups put political parties and advertisers further out of touch with people rather than closer.

Pop artist Claes Oldenburg said it best in relation to public art: "The public don't know what they want." And he's right. Even though I filled out one of the surveys, when I think about it deep down, I've got no freaking clue what I want from a radio station. I know nothing about radio, how playlists are created, how to create diversity within a playlist without making the changes between songs too jarring. I like music, so I fancy that I would put together a pretty good playlist, but the only person who would really like all of it would be me.

No, Dig I don't know what I would like you to be. What I want is an expert to use their expertise and guide me, and maybe surprise me. What I don't want is to have assumptions made about me. Probably the only place I can tolerate this kind of autocracy is in the complex world of culture. Not because I believe all our cultural decisions should be made for us but because I have, as a result of working in the arts industry, a large amount of respect for the people that have devoted their careers and education to arranging and organizing cultural products for popular consumption. Many of these people are or have been artists themselves, they are smart people with years of research, learning, successes and failures behind them. I respect that the decisions they make are good ones because they have this knowledge informing them. But more importantly I get a sense from such people and their decisions that they respect their audience enough to make the assumption that they will be open to exploring their curatorial strategies that take risks, rather than adhere to the safe and familiar.

Sure, as a white middle-class male in his late thirties, I pretty much personify the Double J demographic. And I will still call Pavement one of the greatest bands ever to anybody who will listen, but that doesn't mean I actually listen to Pavement that much anymore. My music taste has matured with me, become more diverse, more enthusiastic about electronic music and pop, more interested in originality rather than a particular "sound", more interested in how musicians evolve rather than their ability to stay the same, essentially, just less pretentious than I was in the 90s. And the old Dig wasn't necessarily a radio station that satisfied that particular taste, but it didn't treat me like an idiot either. It appeared unselfconscious and didn’t seem to be trying to please anybody in particular, and for that fact alone, pleased me greatly. However, now it is trying to please me. Me specifically. It’s counting on my 90s penchant for nostalgia, but what it is often overlooked by such simplistic views of that decade is the fact that it was old to begin, it was already a nostalgic time, and had a nostalgic sound. And that is not a sound that is sustainable over time.

I caught a bit of the launch broadcast, the bit where the new lead announcer Myf Warhurst reminisced with Paul Dempsey about the time they shared a house together in the 90s. Dempsey played an old Something For Kate song and when asked why he chose to play that particular song, he said that it was because it sat well with the nostalgic tone of the station. That is, the new nostalgic tone. And it was only at this moment that I figured out that the reason why I was so uncomfortable at that party a few years ago was because of this tone of nostalgia. It wasn't because Gen Y was all of sudden claiming my musical adolescence as their own, they most likely did genuinely like it, they most likely were as blown away by it as I was at their age, which is great, but doesn’t make it relevant. What made me feel so awkward was not the youthful enthusiasm for music that was no longer youthful, it was that the original nostalgic tone of that music was being mistaken for youthfulness and had therefore become something much worse than old, way worse than retro… it was "classic".

The radio classic can’t be defined better than as a form of hollow nostalgia. Nostalgia for its own sake, without any real meaning beyond being nostalgic. Radio creates classics by adding an extra layer of nostalgia to the music simply by broadcasting it. Although the word “classic” will never be used on Double J, that is where the Bryan Adamses will be replaced by the Dinosaur Jrs. But this is not an exchange that can be made without serious collateral damage. As much as Triple J would like to claim it, radio was not where I discovered these bands, and most certainly was not where I looked to discover them. The pre-digital network of mixtapes, album liner notes and Rage guest-programmers yielded more new music to me than radio ever did. The problem now is context, the radio is not the natural home of the majority of the music that is being re-animated by the burgeoning nostalgia market of which Double J is but a symptom, and cafes furnished with mismatched second-hand decor maybe the cause. No major Australian radio station in the 90s could have safely played "Range Life" and "Dirty Boots" within minutes of each other as happened the other day on what was still Dig.

Digital radio might be the new home for the nostalgic yearnings of beer guts in band shirts and nose studded nannas, but for the moment I’m happy for my personal music collection and my radio to remain separate. Some monkeys should just be allowed to stay in heaven.

[And fuck it, I’m listening to Dig - I  mean Double J - as I write and the most annoying prick in Australian music, Ben Lee comes on with "American Television", which is, I’m embarrassed to know, essentially a song about nostalgia for the 90s. You look beautiful in 1994. You sure do. Shame it’s 20 years later.]