Hypermediated
zones of space and time, where the borders between public and private,
voyeur and surveillant, consumer and user, cross and recross in a jumble
of ubiquitous digital mass media. Where is there a subject from whom arises
a sequencing of information, the generation of knowledge, interpretation,
criticism, and values? One avoidance tactic around the problem of the
subject is to use multimedia software by means of a formalist methodology
in the arts, whereby whatever software happens to be available, or can
be scammed at the behest of a friendly technical collaborator, is deconstructed
as a formalist exercise. Ironically, it sometimes seems that such strategies
are based on a secret hope that somehow, in deconstruction and reapplication
of software in new aestheticized contexts will reveal, like the burning
bush of Moses, the presence of pure form as a reified cyberpresence. This
hope is simultaneously subverted by the endless glitches of hardware and
software.
