Art in the Age of Biocybernetic Self-Reproduction
Institute for New Culture-Technologies

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FIRST PUBLIC INTERNET-WWW ACCESS IN VIENNA

Excerpt from: "SYNREAL SYSTEMS"
by Konrad Becker

" … The two circuits of elemental control-fields are the economies of affirmation and diversion. For example, to create problems or needs and to provide a selection of solutions standardized through a symbol-selection committee. Or to provide artificial environments by menu-control which, watertight till systemcrash, will be accepted from the pattern-processing organisms as pasture is by cattle. The successful principle of the menu, beyond the realms of gastronomy, is the easy interaction with which it opens a view through predefined windows. Is this where the expression cooked-data comes from?

A menu-card is only a special form of map, a symbolic orientation system, as it is traditional subject of military intelligence. Worldmaps have always been an instrument of political power. Proportional distortions that come through subjective projection of a 3-dimensional space onto the plane, have been attributed with the aura of objectivity and used for propaganda purposes. Ways of life are becoming flagged and marked, because who would want to sail to the end of the world and fall into the bottomless abyss … Maps offer an abstracted view of the world, and of the group that manufactures these. This is particularly obvious with very old maps. If you want to know which way the wind is blowing, one only has to look at "center-of-the world" representation. Galileo's solar-system wars are propaganda wars. The file is still open. The sun has never set but the dawn of empires is routine …

Ambassadorial systems are highly effective inducers and the costs are accepted. Even today, topographic maps are processed and details manipulated for strategic reasons. For the same reason, the access to high resolution satellite cameras is restricted. Seamless parquetry and non-local tiling of the imaginary space as a telematic flaming script menetekel.